From the build link, this is the cycle I generally follow to the best of my ability. Yes, sometimes usually the buff bar is uncooperative and you won't be able to track your Tal Rasha stacks, but you're going to have to develop an internal clock for timing the stacks.

RG took about 4.5 minutes to kill, which is too long. Something went wrong there and I have a feeling it has to do with Eskandiel's hitbox because this isn't the first time I noticed that he took an abnormally long time to die. Since it takes about 3 minutes for us to kill an RG on GR69 without a Pylon, either one or both of us really screwed up our DPS cycles on the RG (which I don't believe could have been that drastic), or Eskandiel is a jerk.

The melee Tal Rasha spec for Greater Rifts is incredibly fun to play. It leans more on the defensive side, but that doesn't mean it lacks DPS. It will not deal as much effective DPS as the range setup, which means its GR limit will be lower, but it is more consistent when you're running GRs all the way up into the 50s.

At the time of this post, I've personally cleared GR51 in a single try, GR52 in a single try, GR53 in a single try, and currently on my third GR54 try using this setup.

SKILLS & GEAR

ACTIVES:

LMB: Electrocute - Arc Lightning: This is the required signature spell for this Arcane Dynamo-based spec. Since you'll almost always be at melee range, Arc Lightning is preferred for its superior coverage and damage. It can be replaced by Flame Blade to further buff Mammoth Hydra damage, but Dynamo ramp up will be slower as Electrocute has a speed coefficient of 2 vs. Spectral Blade's 1. You will then have to give up a different skill slot to cover lightning damage. Kiza covers this particular Flame Blade setup in another thread: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/16953845641

RMB: Teleport - Calamity: No exceptions. Calamity is the rune to use. You need this to set up or maintain crowd control in order to benefit from APD, your lifeline. It is also the main source of arcane damage for your Tal Rasha stacks.

1: Hydra - Mammoth Hydra: Your main source of DPS.

2: Blizzard - Frozen Solid: When you cannot lock down enough targets with Calamity and Halo of Arlyse alone, Frozen Solid is a great way to hold down enemies at range until you get into a better position. This is also your way to gain cold Tal Rasha stacks.

3: Magic Weapon - Force Weapon: I usually fall on Force Weapon, but this is an open slot. You can use Bone Chill to work with Halo of Arlyse, which will more or less give you insane uptime on the 33% debuff. Slow Time is another great substitute. If you're running a different element for a signature spell (e.g. Flame Blade), a lightning spell like Supermassive works well here.

4: Ice Armor - Crystallize: Need this to get the most out of Halo of Arlyse and to make up some raw toughness lost from dropping Energy Armor.

PASSIVES:

Arcane Dynamo: The main passive. You use this to buff up Hydras and let them loose.

KEY ITEMS:

A note on the Tal Rasha source. Those found prior to 2.2 have the ability to roll Hydra bonus damage on them. As of Patch 2.2, the new Tal Rasha sources always come with Meteor bonus damage. It's a fixed roll, meaning you cannot touch them in any way. As a result, the remaining primary stats cannot be enchanted to a skill bonus. The preference in this Hydra-oriented setup would be to have Hydra bonus. However, Meteor bonus from the new source is still fine.

Stone of Jordan - If you're not going to run Unity, you can try Stone of Jordan for elite DPS as this setup sorely lacks it.

Ring of Royal Grandeur + Firebird - Trading away damage reduction from Unity, you can switch out a Tal Rasha piece with Firebird and run the 2-piece bonus for a free cheat death. Shoulders + source (Firebird's Eye) are good choices, the source is especially nice if you cannot obtain a Hydra Tal source.

Nilfur's Boast - Best way to get more DPS out of your free Meteors. Greatly aids in Rift Guardian kill time.

Firebird's Pinions + Firebird's Tarsi - Shoulder options are highly lacking and Unstable Anomaly is the only way you can cheat death. Having the 2-piece Firebird bonus can save you a lot of headaches. This would be the choice if you are willing to sacrifice Nilfur's Boast, but unwilling to give up a ring slot for Ring of Royal Grandeur.

Pauldrons of the Skeleton King - As said, shoulder options are highly lacking. If Nilfur's Boast is selected, these shoulders can sometimes give you that extra cheat death opportunity.

GEMS:

Main:Zei's Stone of Vengeance - Dynamically updates all DoT damage the further you are away from the affected target. For Hydra damage, this is based on where the Hydra is located relative to the target.

Bane of the Trapped - Bonus damage triggers as long as the target is under crowd control (you don't necessarily have to be the one doing the CC).

Secondary:Esoteric Alteration - Crazy added defense prevents ranged enemies from picking you off when you don't have APD's bonus active (physical projectiles can still wreck you, though). This gem allows you to take even more damage to the face.

Pain Enhancer - Works incredibly well with Mammoth Hydra (which can proc the gem's effects). As you would often be surrounding by enemies, the increased attack speed can further boost Hydra's DPS. If you're running a Flame Blade variant, this gem can be considered your go-to choice. Beware of potential frame rate drops if you're hitting too many targets.

Follower Spec (Templar):

Follower Main Gear:Eun-Jang-Do - RIP Thunderfury. First thing, this setup is already on crowd control, so no need for a Thunderfury to help aid Bane of the Trapped. Eun-Jang-Do? Save it for those fleeing elites or a dying Rift Guardian.

Enchanting Favor - Used in combination with a second Unity in order to grant permanent 50% bonus mitigation

Follower Optional Gear:Oculus Ring - More APS for the follower means more CC.

Bul-Kathos's Wedding Band - If you're not running both Unity and Oculus Ring, BK Wedding Band is a suitable DPS option for your Templar.

Ess of Johan - More CC, great for helping set up targets; can sometimes get you killed if the Templar pulls mobs in onto you, but usually that won't happen in this setup.

GAMEPLAY

Unlike Apocalypse Firebird in 2.1.2 and prior, the melee Tal Rasha wizard is incredibly durable and can push out a lot of damage without needing to herd things around all over the map. Some herding may be necessary when mob numbers dwindle, as the APD bonus is dependent on how many targets you manage to stun.

Play style is somewhat frantic, but in a way, elegant. Personally, it reminds me of the old CM wizard in classic D3. Mobs are more often than not locked down. You have a lot of synergy happening simultaneously:

1. Calamity can set up a fight, trigger an early Star Pact Meteor from Tal Rasha 2-piece, add an arcane Tal stack, and trigger APD to help you tank incoming range attacks.

2. Incoming range attacks against your APD fueled toughness usually isn't enough to kill you, but can deal enough damage to trigger Halo of Arlyse, which in return continue to trigger APD. In addition, it can trigger Illusionist to allow you to recast Calamity. Rinse and repeat.

3. Frozen Solid also contributes to APD's bonus if you freeze targets within 25 yards. It's also your weapon to lock down more high-threat ranged enemies when Calamity is unavailable. The cold damage that enemies walk through, but do not freeze, can trigger Comet from Tal's 2-piece, which will then guarantee a freeze on impact.

4. In a situation where incoming damage is too much, Esoteric Alteration's secondary effect kicks in to give you the time to reposition and re-engage additional targets for more APD bonus reduction. During this time, it's relatively simple to heal up through globes from slain enemies, the Templar's healing spells, or your own potion.

And let's not forget the signature spells, Arcane Dynamo, and the secondary effect of Zei's (chance to stun on hit). Since Arc Lightning scales with attack speed, as does Hydra, the faster you attack, the more you can trigger Zei's for more stun for APD, the faster your Dynamo ramps up.

This all sounds nice and dandy, and to be honest, yes, the spec is much easier to play than Firebird's. While you can do the same with Firebird, the 6-piece Tal bonus is a much stronger option. However, like with all high Greater Rift attempts, you have to constantly make decisions. From the last 101 thread:

All serious GR attempts follow a system similar to driving on the road. It involves repeating three phases over and over and over again:

Phase 1: Scanning
Phase 2: Predicting
Phase 3: Reacting

In Phase 1, you will be scanning your surroundings. In terms of GRs, you will be constantly checking the minimap and your character's immediate vicinity for enemies and patterns. In addition, checking on the progress bar for how much time you have remaining is important. You have to factor in the time it'll take you to down the RG. As soon as you get an idea of what type of tileset you're in (e.g. Caverns tileset, Keeps tileset, Sewers tileset, etc.) and what mob combination populates the Rift level, you move on to Phase 2.

In Phase 2, you will be predicting the best and worst outcomes for the current Rift level. Based on the mob types and the level tileset, you have to decide whether to attempt to engage the enemies you encounter or skip them. For low density levels in long, intricate map layouts (e.g. levels that resemble Act II's Sirocco Caverns), you may have to decide to speed through it to get to the next level rather than waste time picking off the occasional enemy. Depending on how any of these levels roll, you move on to Phase 3.

In Phase 3, you react to situations based on your predictions in Phase 2. This is where players adapt. Sometimes things will go as planned (mob composition is exactly what you expected), sometimes not (encounter mob types you did not expect, hit a dead end, etc.).

The melee Tal Rasha spec requires you to play aggressively. The more you idle, the more likely you'll get smashed in the face. You have to try to stun enemies as often as possible, as many enemies as possible. The more you do so, the tankier you are, the more forgiving mistakes are (but don't let this be an excuse to make dumb mistakes like walking into Demonic Forges or a line of bees). Since you'll always be in the middle of heavy combat, you have to keep an eye out on everything happening outside your freeze and stun range. Projectiles coming from the side of your screen, incoming elite affixes, etc. can also cause major issues if you leave them around. Try to address them as soon as you see them (or at least set up a plan) so you can hold down as many enemies and kill them off at the same time.

Example scenario: You see a group of Lacuni Huntresses and Lacuni Slashers in the northwest. As you're moving, you plan to lock down the Huntresses before they can leap and throw their projectiles. The Slashers should pose no problem as your Halo can negate their attacks. However, if you fail to stun the Huntresses, they may spread out and start bombarding you with ranged attacks.

Best case scenario, you lock down and kill off the Lacuni before they can react, but in the case where a few jump out, you have to make decisions. Do you know if you can stand your ground and tank the hits? Lacuni Huntresses will leap, throw their projectiles, and leap back onto you. If you can withstand their ranged attacks without fear, they'll come back to you and you'll be able to lock them down. Now combine these Lacuni with other types of enemies of all threat levels. Morlu Incinerators? Savage Beasts? You have to grow extremely familiar with what enemies can pose a threat to you even if you have APD's bonus and Tal's 4-piece bonuses active.

For example, as an Apocalypse Firebird wizard, enemies like Corrupted Angels and Winged Assassins were pretty much the bane of your existence. However, these mobs are food for a melee Tal Rasha wizard. As both are melee enemies and relatively easy to kill when they're standing still, they can't do anything to you. Conversely, enemies like Grotesques and Succubi don't pose too many problems for a Firebird wizard that's constantly moving around, but for a melee Tal wizard that specializes in clamping down in one spot and DPSing everything from one small area, physical attacks like Grotesque explosions and the Succubus's Blood Star that sneaks through the cracks can bypass Esoteric's reduction and potentially catch you during APD's downtime.

This is why it's so important for you to always aim for the largest clusters of mobs and bring whatever enemies you're fighting with you. It's a form of herding. You fight and kill off what you need to, but straggling enemies that can still contribute good progress should come along with you to combine with packs up ahead. While this habit isn't limited to a melee Tal spec (it's pretty much a basic practice for any successful GR run, solo or group), it's especially important because of APD's reliance on the number of stunned targets.

When all the engines are running, you'll Teleport into a huge cluster of mobs and start cycling through your Tal Rasha stacks and buffing up your Hydras to DPS everything down while you repeat the crowd control to maintain APD's bonus. When the enemy numbers dwindle, you lead them off toward the next cluster of mobs and repeat the process until you face the Rift Guardian.

TIPS & TRICKS

1. Cycling through the Tal Rasha stacks isn't an issue at all in this spec. As everything is available at all times—other than Calamity, which still has high uptime due to Illusionist—you can ramp from zero to four in very little time. I generally always have Arc Lightning going to be at full Arcane Dynamo stacks. I cast or reposition Hydra when I can to always have the fire Tal stack. Repeating Frozen Storm and Calamity as means to maintain APD's bonus naturally also give the remaining stacks.

2. Always prioritize locking down ranged enemies if you are unable to get past them. Melee enemies will eventually get into range, but ranged mobs can be devastating, tend to run away or keep a distance from you.

3. Focus on killing high progress to health ratio enemies. It's a rule to follow for all Greater Rift attempts, but it doesn't hurt to mention it here. Don't bother picking off the last little spider or Bile Crawler. Kill off the goatmen, the Disentombed Hulks and Fallen Hounds first and look for more to kill elsewhere. Then again, see #2 - don't neglect the dangerous ranged mobs if you cannot get away from them.

4. When fighting a Rift Guardian, try to kite it to narrow corridors or corners with doors so your Templar can block it, allowing you to move into blind spots outside aggro range. This will allow you to place your Hydra at max distance to get the most out of Zei's. You don't have to hit things with your spells for Tal's stacks to kick in or for Arcane Dynamo to ramp up. It'll help if you land the spells to trigger the 2-piece Meteors, but if you're fighting a really dangerous physical RG like Bloodmaw or Perdition, or a ranged RG like the Choker or Agnidox, it may be in your best interest to focus on staying alive and allowing your Hydras to do their thing. Dead DPS = zero DPS.

5. If you find a Power Pylon, don't grab it right away. Take a look at your surroundings to see if the mob composition offers fast and easy progress. Also take note of the map you're on. If it seems like the map will be a massive one and the enemies are manageable, skip them and the Pylon so you can come back later when the RG is close to spawning. This is another tip that's not limited to this particular spec. Just a good habit to keep.

I'll wait until Lance decides to put in his two cents, but the reason why he ran Stretch Time was because he was unable to reach the 4.032 BP for Hydras. I opted for Gogok instead as I use Flash and Frozen Mist.

For the spec I used, it should be superior to the one Lance ran for multiple targets, though it pales in comparison against single targets. More research will need to be done on this.

So to go into the spec I used a little more, all the focus goes into the WD/sader clustering enemies together for Flame Blade to quickly rack up stacks to buff Mammoth Hydra. Throughout the Rift, it isn't uncommon to see 200-300 Flame Blade stacks. Trash mobs and any unproblematic elites mixed in melt with ease. Frozen Mist, Flash and Arcane Orbit are all used to maintain Tal stacks. The reason why I chose those are because they take no attack turns, allowing you to continue maintaining Flame Blade stacks without stopping.

However, once it comes down to a single target, the group DPS suffers. Both the UE DH and the setup I use don't deal too much single target DPS. We can still down a GR65 RG in ~3 minutes if there are no issues stunlocking with the WD. Anecdotally, when dealing with multiple mobs, the spec I used is comparable or even better than what a UE DH can push out... based on current gear levels.

Key stats:I haven't been able to achieve this yet, but it's a work in progress
7% IAS on weapon, chest, gloves, bracers, both rings
50% pet speed on Tasker required

If you cannot get the above, you will be gimped somewhat by being forced to run Stretch Time or a legendary gem like Pain Enhancer or Gogok to meet BP requirements.

I also used 2-piece Firebird (shoulders/boots for cheat death), but optimally, I would run Nilfur's Boast and Pauldrons of the Skeleton King (potential cheat death). As a result, while I was running, I was missing a decent chunk of my single target DPS, despite Hydra being the main focus.

I don't know how many attempts Lance made for his GR65 and GR66 clears, but the GR65 I did was done in one attempt.

Since the very first day when clans and communities were implemented in Diablo III, the Vizjerei Clan has been closed off to active recruiting of its members. Every member to date gained membership through community influence, friendships with existing members, or having developed the influencer mentality and relationships necessary to find a home within the clan.

However, we have decided after on and off discussions throughout the past few months, that the Vizjerei Clan will adopt a new recruitment policy aimed at stimulating clan growth and activity.

For general questions and concerns, feel free to post in the clan forum.

Fair warning, we are not that easy to impress. For the lack of a better term, you ought to bring a shiny résumé.

About the Vizjerei Clan:

Lore-wise, the Vizjerei clan was one of the oldest and most powerful mage clans in Sanctuary, with its history predating the events of the original Diablo game.

The clan is known for its strict discipline and ability to curb even the wildest of young magic wielders in to proper sorcerers.

Most of the current members in the clan (particularly the founders) consist of community icons, influencers, contributors, theorycrafters and veterans of the wizard class dating back to the original launch date of Diablo III.

I just put out a video showing the GR59 clear I ran in a group consisting of 1x WD, 1x crusader, 2x Tal Rasha wizards. Basically, it's the same composition we normally see on live, except with the 2x wizards replacing the 2x DHs.

The GR59 Rift Guardian was killed in ~52 seconds (starting around the 13:00 mark). And at a little over 1.8 trillion HP, that equates to the two wizards combining for about 34.6 billion eDPS. This was done with Focus and Restraint.

Going into 2.2, we know the benchmark for DPS is whatever M6 DHs can put out when they're ramped up (which doesn't take long).

If that's to stay, I think it's in the best interest of every class to have at least one type of setup that can be around the max damage output of a geared out M6 DH.

Granted, I don't know exactly on average how much damage a buffed up DH can do in a group setting. Since we're talking about high group GR clears, various videos and stream recordings I've watched put individual DHs around the 10-15 billion eDPS range. Some push out a little higher damage, some a little lower.

Here's what I would like to know. Before 2.2, there is no 150% multiplicative damage boosting Focus and Restraint. If a currently well-geared DH drops both RoRG and SOJ and replaces them with Focus/Restraint, thereby dropping Cindercoat for Marauder's chest, is there an effective damage increase or is it a wash?

Dolynick posted the following numbers regarding DHs and the new Focus and Restraint:

These multipliers will go up if the DH had less than 12k Dex with RRoG+SoJ.
The "1 Cluster Arrow down" multipliers will go up if they have any +Hatred bonuses or if he has any additional RCR (must be in non-ring/amulet slots).

I'm still going to state again that even if this works out to roughly equal in this specific 4-man, infinite resource for wizards (Power Hungry fed by globe doc) scenario, it's still an awful way of calling it "balanced". Take away the infinite globes (for solo for example) and a DH will hold a much larger percentage of his damage output than a Tal wizard will. It won't even be close. We gain a lot more from a team like this than they do.

And I agree that for solo, DHs will likely do a better job sustaining the damage than a wizard, so we'll have to see how it plays out as the PTR goes along.

But for groups, if M6 DHs in 2.2 are running damage within that range, then it's great. The Tal set's damage is good enough to be competitive. That's the goal. What's left really is some quality of life adjustments to make cycling elements not as clunky and messy.

When the expansion first came out, I ran approximately 1600 Act I Bounties in the first 40 hours (that's about 320 Caches). Some split farmed, some solo. Some in Normal, some in Master, some in T1/T2 (T6 was out of the question that early in the game). By the time the first month passed, I did around 3000 Bounties.

Not a single RoRG rolled CHC or CHD. Not sure how many rolled sockets, but back then legendary gems didn't exist so it wasn't a desired stat.

Didn't get one with CHC until June 2014.

Now with the guaranteed legendary drop per Cache on T6... too easy.

I lost count on how many RoRGs with CHC/CHD or sockets I've gotten since they made the change. One of the first RoRGs I got since 2.1.2 was a socketed ancient one, too.

I'm not saying your wrong. But every wizard I have talked to says they see the damage increase. I see it. Mammoth Hydra isn't doing 1 attack per second as a DoT anymore. It is critting for a lot and doing it very fast with a TnT. I also don't lose cindercoat with my build. I guess it could just vary from person to person and what their build is. But as of right now, I see a major damage increase with using a non-ancient Serpent.

Seeing something you think is happening doesn't mean it actually is happening.

All they changed was how damage is displayed for Mammoth Hydra and Blazing Hydra. It was to improve system performance and reduce the strain on their server. The numerous individual ticks make up for the aggregated display ticks that used to show in fixed intervals of 0.8 seconds.

Quote from russell3773TnT and a Non Ancient Serpent's sparker(if you don't have an Ancient one) is the way to go. Will out perform an ancient Devasator. It is a buff. But like I said was it a mistake or not, is the real question.

Serpent's Sparker will beat out Devastator hands down in single target scenarios without question. Different story when depending on RNG in a Greater Rift where everything—monsters and you—are constantly in motion. Forced repositioning for both you and Hydras will play a role in how much eDPS you actually dish out. By running SS and TnT, you lose Cindercoat and fire bonus from the Devastator, resulting in lower infinite DoT size, which adds up over time throughout the duration of a GR.

What you may lose, you may gain back against the RG, which is still RNG dependent considering those with numerous adds will drastically reduce Hydra eDPS. Map layout is also a huge factor as highly mobile RGs will also cause problems. Whereas with a Devastator, a significantly larger Firebird tick size makes up for some of the lost damage.

TL;DR - both weapons were comparable before and they're still comparable now.

Here's the TL;DR: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#lQiNSO!Zdbh!YacYZc
- Progress forward, not backward, unless you are close to being overwhelmed
- Never stay in one spot, unless you managed to trap the Rift Guardian
- Maintain minimum 50 yards distance as best you can
- Squeeze in debuffs during burst in order to snapshot prior to infinite DoT kicking in
- Always assume Kormac has poop for brains

Variations may swap out Blur for Glass Cannon or Elemental Exposure, Prismatic Armor for Force Armor, Spellsteal for Blazar, Calamity/Fracture for Safe Passage.

COMPLEMENTARY VIDEOS

*Not gearing guides

SKILLS & GEAR

ACTIVES:
LMB: Blizzard - Apocalypse: You don't spam this, as much as I see players do this. First of all, it's a DoT, so the damage is normalized. You cannot fish for critical hits. Second of all, it doesn't stack, so there's zero point in casting it in the same spot over and over unless you're refreshing it against a single target. You will only cast this more than once in a given instance if you want to cover a bigger area >30 yards.

RMB: Teleport - Safe Passage/Calamity/Fracture: I prefer Safe Passage, others Calamity because it's an easy way to guarantee the bonus from Bane of the Trapped and also use with Elemental Exposure. Safe Passage can really help prevent 1-shots (chain Jailing, Executioner/Punisher windups, Butcher's AOE fan attack, etc.) and can almost serve as a third life beyond Unstable Anomaly and Firebird's 4-piece. I also see use in Fracture as the decoys can absorb dangerous attacks (especially stray projectiles).

2. Black Hole - Blazar/Spellsteal: Blazar is the more popular choice as it greatly helps ramping up fire damage for Firebird's DoT. Sets up for Apocalypse and Hydra. Triggers Strongarm Bracer's debuff. Spellsteal sees alternative use since 2.1.2 as monster density has drastically increased in general. High stack Spellsteal buffs greatly increases damage potential from skills like Apocalypse and Mammoth Hydra. Bonus for being arcane and adding to Elemental Exposure. Downside is lower damage against Rift Guardians.

PASSIVES:Blur/Glass Cannon/Elemental Exposure: Same thing as Prismatic vs. Force. If you're gonna get killed in one shot anyway, you might as well run Glass Cannon for more DPS. If you can take an extra hit with Blur, use it for the insurance. Anything's better than dying and waiting to revive. Elemental Exposure is harder to pull off, but the debuff is extraordinary with Firebird's. Even 10% is preferable.

Evocation: Helps with Teleport and Black Hole upkeep. More cooldown reduction directly translates to more DPS and survivability..

Alternate Item Combos:Unity - Recommended starter setup; requires immortal follower token (e.g. Enchanting Favor) and a second Unity on the followerThe Compass Rose + The Traveler's Pledge - ring in place of Unity; set provides decent 250 vitality and 50% CHD. Main perk is Compass Rose's five primariesRing of Royal Grandeur + Cindercoat/Magefist - Very glassy setup with Cindercoat, but allows much more spam (virtually useless against RG); Magefist allows five primariesSerpent's Sparker + Firebird's Eye - This frees up another Firebird piece, allowing you to run something like Tasker and Theo to maximize Hydra.Sunkeeper + Firebird's Eye - Same thing; frees up a Firebird piece. Cindercoat is a viable option with Meteor Shower replacing Hydra. Results may be more inconsistent than Furnace, but fits players who prefer faster playstyles.Devastator + Firebird's Eye - Same thing; frees up a Firebird piece and allows you to run Cindercoat.

The reason is because a good chunk of your 15 minutes of allotted time in the Greater Rift would be against the Rift Guardian. As a result, you really want to prioritize elite damage. If you don't have a Furnace, use a Sunkeeper. Go down the list until you reach a Devastator, which can be crafted with relative ease.

If you don't have an ancient Furnace, however, go with ancient one-handed weapons if you have an ancient Firebird's Eye. Based on my experiences, it's still worthwhile to use a non-ancient Furnace over an ancient one-hander without the ancient source. Again, this is because of elite bonuses. If you decide to run an ancient one-hander over a non-ancient Furnace, you'll gain kill speed against regular mobs, but lose DPS against elites.

However, all that said, in 2.1.2 it's arguable that Devastator could be preferable over a Sunkeeper because of the drastic increase in trash density. Because the majority of the progress you get in a Rift will be from trash, you may want to prioritize your base fire damage. You'll gain time throughout the Rift fighting trash, but you'll lose time against the Rift Guardian. Think carefully about what you have more trouble with and pick your weapon.

GEMS:Zei's Stone of Vengeance: Dynamically updates all DoT damage the further you are away from the affected target. Fantastic against the RG.Gem of Efficacious Toxin: DoT damage is nice, debuff is even better as Firebird's secondary DoT double-dips into it. Moar damage.Bane of the Trapped: Bonus damage triggers as long as the target is under crowd control (you don't necessarily have to be the one doing the CC). Works on RGs (main perk).

Follower Main Gear (Templar):Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker - Thunderfury's periodic proc provides fantastic AOE crowd control. This is the main way to trigger Bane of the Trapped on multiple targets.Enchanting Favor - Used in combination with a second Unity in order to grant permanent 50% bonus mitigation

Follower Optional Gear:Freeze of Deflection - Extra CC opportunitiesOculus Ring - More APS for the follower means more CC.Ess of Johan - More CC, great for helping set up targets; can sometimes get you killed if the Templar pulls mobs in onto youLegacy Star of Azkaranth - No longer available as a drop, but for vanilla players, the amulet comes with a chance for CC.Legacy Puzzle Ring - No longer available as a drop, but vanilla players, the goblin spawn can trigger at least once per Rift run. If killed, it provides a hefty amount of progress (that's if you can kill it)

GAMEPLAY

Firebird's for high Greater Rifts takes a lot of practice and isn't exactly easy to master. It requires a keen sense of positioning and involves quick reaction times. The faster you can adjust to the situation and your surroundings, the better you will fare. No exaggeration. You have to constantly make decisions throughout the entire Rift from beginning to end.

All serious GR attempts follow a system similar to driving on the road. It involves repeating three phases over and over and over again:

Phase 1: Scanning
Phase 2: Predicting
Phase 3: Reacting

In Phase 1, you will be scanning your surroundings. In terms of GRs, you will be constantly checking the minimap and your character's immediate vicinity for enemies and patterns. In addition, checking on the progress bar for how much time you have remaining is important. You have to factor in the time it'll take you to down the RG. As soon as you get an idea of what type of tileset you're in (e.g. Caverns tileset, Keeps tileset, Sewers tileset, etc.) and what mob combination populates the Rift level, you move on to Phase 2.

In Phase 2, you will be predicting the best and worst outcomes for the current Rift level. Based on the mob types and the level tileset, you have to decide whether to attempt to trigger Firebird's on the enemies you encounter or skip them. For low density levels in long, intricate map layouts (e.g. levels that resemble Act II's Sirocco Caverns), you may have to decide to speed through it to get to the next level rather than waste time picking off the occasional enemy. Depending on how any of these levels roll, you move on to Phase 3.

In Phase 3, you react to situations based on your predictions in Phase 2. This is where players adapt. Sometimes things will go as planned (density is exactly what you expected), sometimes not (encounter mob types you did not expect, hit a dead end, etc.).

As of Patch 2.1.2, changes to monster compositions, density, map layouts, and Pylons have made Greater Rift attempts far easier than it has ever been before. The roadblocks are the same, though, as you will eventually hit a DPS wall and will no longer be able to progress due to gear limitations. The ceiling is simply higher than pre-2.1.2 days.

In terms of actually playing the GR Firebird build, you need to develop some good habits. The first is to remember to move forward as much as you can, rather than kite in circles, or worse, backward. Walking through empty levels is the worst for GR progression. You always want to have something to kill. As a result, when you find clusters of mobs, you want to be able to "herd" them toward other mobs you come across deeper in the Rift level.

In Patch 2.1.2, mob density has been increased to the point where kiting forward incessantly can easily overwhelm you and get you killed. As a result, you have to be fully aware of your character's limitations. As soon as you reach a threshold where you feel you're out of space and a single misstep will guarantee death, you need to take a step back and whittle down the enemies around you in order to create space. Positioning is always key and if you have no space for optimal positioning, you're asking for a lot of trouble.

Example scenario: You see a cluster of Lacuni Slashers, Fallen Masters, and Fallen Soldiers in front of you. Instead of casting Black Hole and Apocalypse on them and then running in circles while the DoTs kill them, you need to aggro them with Apocalypse while moving ahead of them, all while covering the path in front of you with additional casts of Apocalypse. This will keep the DoT on the targets while also maintaining the aggro necessary for the mobs to follow you. In some cases, you will have to move in a zigzag route for slow mobs that have a difficult time keeping up, such as skeletons and zombies.

However, if you're in a situation where you find massive clusters of mobs ahead of you with more incoming from behind, you must pull the mobs in front toward you and combine them with the ones you herded from behind. Combining clusters of mobs and then whittling their numbers down before progressing is a decision you have to make. Investing some seconds to conservatively build up progress, speeding ahead with greed to obtain more progress, or speeding ahead and get overwhelmed by sheer numbers, can be the difference in making or breaking your Rift attempt.

The same herding concept applies to elites. You do not want to sit around waiting for elites to die. In higher GR levels, e.g. 40+, elites regularly have several billion HP. Even if you are dishing out 500M eDPS on elites, it'll take time for them to die, and that's assuming they do not have deadly affixes you need to avoid.

You will set up with Apocalypse to aggro the elites, much like you would for regular mobs. While the elites are within Apocalypse's AOE and under CC effects from your Templar, gather them up with Black Hole and set up Mammoth Hydra AHEAD of them. Remember, you always want to try and go forward, not backward. By the time Apocalypse ticks away, Black Hole nuked and debuffed the elites, and Hydra attacked a couple of times, you will start leapfrogging both Apocalypse and Hydra while moving ahead of the elites. The infinite DoT from Firebird's should have kicked in if you managed to land all your fire spells. If not, the sequence must be repeated, again, all while moving forward.

In the best situations, while moving forward, you will be able to herd multiple elite packs together. The more targets you combine, the more you can utilize area damage for Apocalypse (Firebird's DoT and Hydra attacks do not benefit from area damage) and Black Hole can help cluster multiple high priority targets together. In addition, more threats to hit you allows you to spam Teleport more often to get yourself in a better position.

To repeat, remember despite always wanting to progress forward, there will be instances where you obviously cannot do that. At some point, you will be aggroing and herding up mobs faster than you can kill all of them. In those situations, it's necessary to just bear down and make sure a good number of them die before you continue on. Many players end up dying simply because of being overwhelmed.

There are also specific types of enemies that you should not attempt to herd. These include Winged Assassins, Lacuni Huntresses, Burrowing Leapers, and their kin. These types of enemies will more than likely always outrun you unless you attempt to spam Teleport beyond their aggro range (which would mean you're not going to be killing them with the DoTs anyway). So if you end up with an elite pack of Winged Assassins, you have two choices. Deal with them on the spot by tanking the best you can and running in circles, or Teleport as far away as possible and skip them if you think you're going to end up dying to them. Granted, trying to skip them could put you in the "overwhelmed" situation if more mobs of the same type are located ahead.

TIPS & TRICKS

1. If your goal is to place as high on the leaderboard as possible and you have a lot of time on your hands, you can "cheat" a little by gathering up a group of DHs + zDPS crusader to speed farm Trial Rifts. It is incredibly easy to pick up GR40+ keys by doing this. While it is pretty lame, you can binge on these keys by opening GR after GR, picking your map layouts and mob types until you get the one you think you can clear. Doesn't always work, but by skipping the maps and mobs you think will cause you more of a headache, you save time.

3. On the other hand, skip the ones with low progress-to-effort ratios. Basically these are mobs that either take too long to kill for their progress or offer little to no progress at all. If you try to herd them and kill them, you're going to be wasting a lot of time. However, there are low progress mobs that may be in your best interest to kill alongside others, such as Skeletal Archers, as the more you end up herding, the more they can become major headaches.

4. When fighting a Rift Guardian, try to kite it to narrow corridors or corners with doors so your Templar can block it, allowing you to move into blind spots outside aggro range. This will allow you to place your Hydra and for you to stand at max distance to get the most out of Zei's, and also allow you to freely cast your Apocalypse and Blazars for guaranteed hits. However, the Templar will be stupid and run to your side if you move too far away, so be careful.

0-9

0-Dog: or "Zero Dogs," a witch doctor build that revolves around items that reduce the cooldown of the Zombie Dogs ability (see: 'ZD'). With the proper items, Zombie Dogs can be reduced to little or no cooldown. The build then utilizes the witch doctor's "Sacrifice" ability, which destroys existing Zombie Dogs to deal massive damage to enemies in an area. In vanilla, the build was designed to deal significant damage. In Reaper of Souls, the build offers more utility. Warning: may drastically reduce frame rates.

1: short for "elite." Less often used than "e" (see: 'e'), the short-hand "1" originated from players that do not use an English keyboard and will hit 1 as a universal notification to alert party members of elite and champion packs. "1" is also pronounced exactly the same as "E" in Mandarin Chinese, so you often see it used by Chinese players.

A-B

Affix: a term that refers to properties that are assigned to a given object, which can include magical properties on items or abilities on in-game monsters. It is usually associated with the latter and can also be called “boss modifiers.” They include: Arcane Enchanted, Avenger, Desecrator, Electrified, Extra Health, Fast, Fire Chains, Frozen, Frozen Pulse, Health Link, Horde, Illusionist, Jailer, Knockback, Missile Dampening, Molten, Mortar, Nightmarish, Orbital, Plagued, Poison Enchanted, Reflect Damage, Shielding, Teleporter, Thunderstorm, Vampiric, Vortex, Waller, and Wormhole.

AH:vanilla - short for “Auction House,” a feature of Diablo III that acts as a trading hub for players. Players buy, bid on, and sell items and commodities (see: ‘Commodity’) anonymously on the Auction House much like people do on auction websites like eBay. The Auction House comes in two different entities, the Gold Auction House (see: ‘GAH’) and the Real Money Auction House (see: ‘RMAH’). Both Auction Houses will be shut down on March 18, 2014.

Aggro: a term that gained popularity in MMORPG and MUD games that represents the act of "aggravating" or triggering "aggression" from enemies without initiating an attack. For example, enemies can be "aggro'd" simply when a player comes within a certain range. Sometimes refers to real life instances that interrupt gaming sessions, such as receiving an important phone call or a significant other demanding attention.

Alkaizer Run:vanilla - or "Alk Run," which refers to a set route a player can take in Act III Inferno to gain the highest amount of experience for his character in the shortest time. Named after "Alkaizer," who became the world's first paragon 100 character in Diablo III. The route consists of going from the Core of the Arreat checkpoint south to the waypoint, a full circle around Tower of the Damned level 1, then to Arreat Creater 2's waypoint through the end, then teleport to Keep level 2 and do as full a clear as possible, then teleport to Bridge of Korsikk's waypoint and do a full circle around Fields of Slaughter. Then the run is repeated indefinitely until the player either loses sanity or simply becomes too bored or too tired to continue (or simply hits paragon level 100). Other variations include clearing Arreat Crater 1, Keep level 3, Stonefort and/or Rakkis Crossing. No longer the most optimal leveling method since patch 1.08 with monster density changes across Acts.

Alt: short for "alternate" character or any character a player uses second to his/her main character. See: 'Main.' Usually receives less love or hand-me-down gear. See: 'Twink.'

Ammy: short for "amulet," a type of gear that falls in the neck category. Can also sometimes be abbreviated as "amu."

Andy's: short for "Andariel's Visage," a legendary helm known for being the only helm capable of rolling any elemental bonus at the cost of taking additional fire damage.

AOE: short for "area of effect." Refers to spells that influence targets over an area rather than a single target.

AP: short for "Arcane Power," the primary resource used by the wizard class. See: 'Resource.'

APoC: short for "Arcane Power on Critical Hits" or "AP on crit," a stat that is specific to the wizard class. See: 'AP' and 'crit.'

APS: short for "attacks per second," which refers to the rate at which a character launches attacks, e.g. "1.93 APS," "2.01 APS," "3.0 APS," etc. Can also refer to a weapon's swing speed (for example, a standard two-handed crossbow is 1.10 APS). Not to be confused with “actions per second.”

AR: short for "resistance to all elements" or most commonly "all resistance" or just "resist." It's a highly desired stat that boosts a character's survivability. See: 'EHP.'

Aren't You Thankful!?: a sarcastic remark made by players when responding to comments that center around complaints and gripes. It is a nod to a forum post made by Blizzard Community Manager Bashiok:

“We don't want people to be afraid of nerfs, and ... I guess maybe I can try to get that across by saying we could have nerfed a bunch of stats that probably deserve it to some degree, but we didn't (aren't you thankful!?), because we don't believe our design approach should be constantly noodling with really important things, like stats. It should only be when we have an extreme situation developing, and we felt that was the case with IAS.”

Ball of Death: a nickname used for the wizard's Archon form, based on the character's transformation into a ball that can usually promptly melt most or all enemy mobs with a single click.

Ballerina: vanilla - a nickname used for barbarians who focus on the Sprint and Whirlwind combination. When used, the barbarian spins through waves of mobs, resembling a ballerina. Can also be called “barbarina.”

Barb: short for "Barbarian," a melee strength-based class in D3. Will sometimes also be referred to as "bar," "barbar," or "baba."

Barblo:portmanteau of the words barbarian and Diablo, referencing the idea that the game is built entirely around the one and only barbarian class, while completely neglecting all other classes. It's a false statement, but originated from disgruntled players upset with the perks that come with the barbarian class not found on the others.

Blue:refers to employees of Blizzard Entertainment who post on the official forums. Generally Blues refer to the community managers/representatives (see: ‘CM’), who are heavily responsible for moderating the official forums of Blizzard games, acting as a bridge of communication between the player base and the developers, in addition to providing a constant stream of information regarding such games via company employees and sources, on top of many social media and public relations tasks. Nicknamed "blue" because of the blue-colored font that is used in each forum post or thread, a privilege exclusive to the community managers/reps and other Blizzard employees. Current Diablo III community manager is Lylirra, and the community representatives are Grimiku, Nevalistis and Tyvalir.

BM:vanilla - short for "Blood Magic," a rune for the wizard's "Magic Weapon" ability. In Patch 2.01, Reaper of Souls and onward, this rune was replaced by Deflection.

BO: vanilla - or "b/o," short for "buyout." Refers to items being sold or up for auction with an X amount of gold or currency as its immediate purchase price. See: 'BIN.'

BoA: short for "Bind on Account," specifically referring to items that cannot be sold or traded to other players and are "bound" to a single player's account. In Reaper of Souls, all gold, Horadric Cache items, gambled items, Marquise and higher tier gems, crafting materials, plans, and unique items will be bound to the player’s account. Unique items will have a two hour window of time where players can trade with only those from the same game at the time when the unique item first dropped. Not to be confused with Korean musician BoA or Bank of America.

BoT: short for "Bane of the Trapped," a legendary gem. Sometimes abbreviated as "BotT." Not to be confused with a "bot," or an illegal third-party program that automates gameplay.

BP: short for "breakpoint," or hidden numbers associated with various skills in Diablo III that are often tied to attack speed stats. When a player reaches a certain breakpoint, he or she usually experiences a higher level of effectiveness for his or her character (though it isn't always the case).

BR: short for "Blood Ritual," a passive ability specific to witch doctors. Also short for "Battle Rage," a barbarian ability.

BS: short for "Banner Safe," referring to the act of or mentioning of placing a player's banner in a safe location for teammates to rally on (usually by foot). This is primarily done to save teammates the embarrassment of jumping directly to their deaths from the town. Be aware players cannot teleport to the banner, but rather be notified that the coast is clear to teleport to the player. Can also stand for "Blacksmith."

BT: short for the "Blackthorne" set (example: Blackthorne's Surcoat), a set of gear that is mainly used for raising survivability for characters.

Build: often refers to the skill set that a particular player assigns to his/her character at a given time. May sometimes refer to the "gear build" that a player equips for his/her character.

Buriza: refers to the legendary crossbow "Buriza-do Kyanon." More closely pronounced as Brizado Kyannon (ブリザードキャノン burizādo kyanon, a.k.a. Blizzard Cannon, emphasizing its cold-based weapon damage and also the fact that Diablo is a game published by Blizzard.

BYOM: stands for "bring your own machine," referring to the Infernal Machines that are required to unlock Uber bosses (see: 'Machine' and 'Uber'). Originated from the phrase "BYOB," which stands for "bring your own beer."

Candy Cane:refers to the legendary axe, "The Butcher's Sickle," which bears many similarities with a Christmas candy cane.

Captain America: refers to crusader builds that use the legendary shield Jekangbord and Gyrfalcon's Foote, a legendary flail. The combination of items results in nonstop shield throws from Blessed Shield, which resembles the shield throws from the iconic Marvel superhero.

CC: short for either "critical hit chance" or "crowd control." The former is a stat found on various pieces of gear that is usually combined with cirtical hit damage, and is a very important stat for improving character damage (see: 'CHC'). The latter refers to abilities that disable or debuff target(s) either by single target or area skills and effects (see: 'AOE').

CD: short for either "critical hit damage" or "cooldown." The former is a stat found on various pieces of gear and is usually paired hand-in-hand with critical hit chance (see: 'CHD'). The latter refers to a period of time when spells or abilities are inactive after use and "cooling down."

CDR: short for “cooldown reduction.”

CE: short for "Collector's Edition," a premium version of Diablo III that comes with a variety of limited supply goods such as a game soundtrack, art book, mouse pad, behind-the-scenes DVD, Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, and the collector's only items Angel Wings (fancy aesthetic bonus for player characters), Bottled Cloud dye and Bottled Smoke dye. For the expansion, Reaper of Souls, the Collector’s Edition includes a game soundtrack, art book, mouse pad, behind-the-scenes DVD, in addition to a pet Spectral Hound (for aesthetics only) and three additional in-game character slots.

CM: vanilla - short for "Critical Mass," a passive ability that is specific for the wizard class. It is primarily used to significantly reduce spell cooldowns via critical hits. See: 'CC' and 'CD.' Can sometimes also be used to refer to the Community Managers of Blizzard Entertainment (see: 'Blue').

C/O: vanilla - short for "current offer," a term used when dealing with auctions and item selling. Refers to the offer currently made by a player to the seller. See: 'OBO.'

COB: short for "Cloud of Bats," a rune for the witch doctor spell, Firebats. See: 'Bats WD.'

Commodity:items that usually come in bulk, such as tomes, gems and crafting materials.

Cookie Cutter: a term used for character skill builds that are overused and proven to be generally very reliable for most game situations.

COTA: short for "Call of the Ancients," a barbarian skill. Also short for "Crypt of the Ancients," a dungeon in Act I that always spawns with numerous skeletons and one champion pack. It's well-known for its small space and easily killable mobs.

CP: short for "checkpoint," an in-game location that marks a spot for players to resume action whenever they restart the game or die in battle.

Crypt Run: vanilla - refers to runs that revolve around the Decaying Crypt dungeon that randomly spawns in the Fields of Misery in Act I. Crypt Runs are generally used for farming experience for paragon levels (see: 'Paragon') and players may sometimes prepare the Crypt beforehand (see: 'Prep') in order to aggro (see: 'Aggro') the Spewing Horror mobs that are in the area. The Spewing Horrors can consistently summon new waves of Decayers that can serve as bonus experience.

D3V: short for “Diablo III Vanilla,” or the original Diablo III. See: ‘Vanilla’ and ‘Vanilla D3.”

Danetta's: short for the "Danetta" set items, which include the one-handed crossbows Danetta's Spite and Danetta's Revenge, items exclusive to the demon hunter class.

DB: short for "Death's Breath," a bind-on-account (see: 'BoA') crafting material that randomly drops off all level 61+ elites and bosses in Reaper of Souls.

DE: short for "Demonic Essence," a bind-on-account (see: 'BoA') crafting material that randomly drops off all sub-level 61 elites and bosses.

deadmau5 Amulet: refers to "Halcyon's Ascent," a legendary amulet serving as an Easter egg and tribute for progressive-house musician deadmau5. Sometimes inaccurately called the "Mickey Mouse amulet" simply because of the mouse-shaped head, despite the amulet's design clearly being a direct nod to deadmau5's signature "mau5head" logo and stage outfit. Halcyon refers to deadmau5's early aliases and the flavor text, "Raise your weapon, raise your weapon... and it's over" is a line from one of deadmau5's songs, "Raise Your Weapon."

Deeps: phonetic pronunciation of "DPS" (see: 'DPS'). For example, "Need more deeps!" means the same as "Need more DPS!"

DH: short for "Demon Hunter," a dexterity-based ranged class in D3.

Ding: sound effect for when a character levels up, usually for paragon levels. Can sometimes be used as a sound effect for when unique items drop on the ground.

Disc: short for "Discipline," one of two resources used by demon hunters with the other being Hatred. See: 'Resource.'

“Internally, we had this super hardcore test group – we’ve got a lot of hardcore players at Blizzard – that tested Inferno, and we got it to the point where they thought it was challenging enough,” Blizzard’s Jay Wilson told IGN. “Then we doubled it. Because we knew, no matter how good we are, our players are gonna be better. We focused on making that as difficult as we could make it.”

For the general player population, the phrase is now predominantly used as the base of harmless or truly bitter jokes, such as "I went to McDonald's and ordered a cheeseburger... and they doubled it." or "The legendary drop rate is so low that even if Blizzard doubled it, it wouldn't matter." (See: 'Tinfoil hat').

DPS: short for "damage per second." This usually is tied hand-in-hand with topics regarding a character's overall offensive capabilities, generally speaking. See: 'EDPS' and 'Sheet DPS.'

EDPS: short for "effective damage per second," or the realistic total damage done per second by a character. This is calculated simply by taking the total damage done by a character to one target (usually of high health total) and dividing it over a set period of time, usually 60 seconds. See: 'DPS' and 'Sheet DPS.'

Epeen: stands for "electronic penis." This term is usually paired with verbs like "flaunting," "bragging" or "showing off" when referring to players that boast about their prowess or competency over the internet, usually in a condescending way.

Epic fail: when a player or party experiences disaster because of lack of game-sense or miscellaneous in-game factors; oftentimes results in death, occasionally results in side-splitting laughter (except in cases of Hardcore deaths). See: 'Fail.'

EQ Set: refers to the barbarian's Might of the Earth set (example: Weight of the Earth), sometimes spelled out as "Earthquake set," in combination with the legendary boots, Lut Socks. See: 'LeapQuake.'

FA: short for "Fetish Army," a witch doctor skill. Also short for "Force Armor," a rune for the Energy Armor ability that is specific to the wizard class. See: 'EA.'

Fail: when a player or party experiences lapses in game-sense and does not succeed in their endeavors; usually results in death. See: 'Epic fail.'

Farm: the act of actively killing enemies in order to obtain items and loot. See: 'Gear,' 'Loot' and 'Run.'

Fear Doc: sometimes referred to as a Tiki Doc, or a witch doctor that utilizes Tiklandian Visage. The build serves a support role for party play, as the voodoo mask allows the witch doctor to permanently fear and root enemies in place when combined with high cooldown reduction items.

Fishing: refers to the act of starting and restarting games to obtain specific results. Usually practiced in high level Greater Rifts in order to bypass the randomness.

Flip: vanilla - a term that refers to the act of [successfully] reselling an item in the auction house at a higher price than the original purchase price.

FoF: or abbreviated as "FotF," short for "Fate of the Fell," a legendary two-handed flail.

FOrb: short for "Frozen Orb," a rune of the Arcane Orb skill for wizards.

Forgotten: the act of instantly salvaging a legendary or set item because it rolled so terribly you want to forget it ever dropped. Coined after the term "Instabrim" (see: 'Instabrim') no longer applied for legendary and set items above level 60, as the crafting material received from salvaging became a Forgotten Soul rather than a Fiery Brimstone.

FOT: short for "Fists of Thunder," a signature ability specific for the monk class.

Frog: refers to the legendary mojo, "Thing of the Deep," which is basically a frog held in the hands of a witch doctor.

Frostitute: vanilla - a wizard that specializes in permanent freeze builds based on the Frost Nova spell. See: 'Perma-' and 'SNS.'

FT:vanilla - short for "for trade," essentially any item that is offered by a player to trade for a desired counterpart. See: 'ISO,' 'WTS,' 'WTB,' 'WTT' and 'WUG.'

FWF:vanilla - stands for Festering Woods + Fields of Misery, a farming run centered around those two areas of Act I. See: 'Run' and 'VSORCS.'

G-L

g: short for "goblin," sometimes extended to "gob," as well. Players in co-op games will use this short-hand to alert party members of a Treasure Goblin, Pygmy or Bandit within their vicinity.

GAH: vanilla - short for "Gold Auction House." This is the default auction house available in the game that serves as a trading junction for players. All sorts of items can be bought here for in-game gold. It was shut down on March 18, 2014. See: ‘AH’ and 'RMAH.'

Gambling: refers to the act of trading Blood Shards for items from Kadala in Adventure Mode. Blood Shards can be obtained through completing Bounties and Nephalem Rifts in Adventure Mode.

Gear: items used to equip Diablo characters; the backbone of the game.

GF: short for "gold find," a type of stat in the Diablo series that passively increases the quantity of gold dropped within the game. Gold find is capped at 300% via gear and Fortune Shrine, but can extend up to 625%, coming from 15% per Nephalem Valor stack (up to 75%) and an additional 25% per Monster Power level (up to 250%; see: 'MP'). Also stands for the witch doctor passive skill "Gruesome Feast." Not to be confused with girlfriend or goldfish.

GG: nowadays stands for "godly gear" or "godly geared" (see: 'Godly'). For example, the GG tag can be inserted in front of high-end items, e.g. GG Natalya's Bloody Footprints, or in front of players (Player A is a GG monk). By video game standards and traditions, GG is short for "good game" and players can still call a high-end item a “good game item.” The traditional GG is primarily used as a courteous way to end competitions or collaborations. Will also sometimes be seen as "GFG," with a classy expletive inserted in between the two G's.

GI: short for "Grave Injustice," a passive ability specific to witch doctors.

Gift: refers to "Ramaladni's Gift." Also refers to the act of using Ramaladni's Gift to add a socket to a weapon.

Glass Cannon: a term used to describe characters that forego survivability stats in favor of maximizing their offensive capabilities (see: 'tank'). Also the name of a passive ability specific to wizards.

Glorious!: a phrase that players often use when expressing genuine surprise, admiration, or in most cases, total sarcastic remarks, that is a nod toward the Templar follower's lines upon defeating elite enemies.

Godly: describes players, characters, items, or anything that's strong enough to be considered out of this world or simply divine.

GRift: short for "Greater Rift," an "endless" higher tiered and timed Nephalem Rift that serves as the source for legendary gems and competition between players due to a leaderboard system. See: 'GR#.'

Hammers: short for “Blessed Hammer,” a crusader skill. Sometimes abbreviated as "BH."

HC: short for "hardcore." Characters running in Hardcore mode will always have the Grim Reaper lurking behind their backs, given that death is permanent. See: 'SC.'

HOTA: short for "Hammer of the Ancients," a skill specific to barbarians, occasionally will be abbreviated as "HOA," though that can sometimes be confused with "Halls of Agony," a series of dungeons in Act I.

HP: short for "hit points" or "health pool" and refers to the total amount of damage a character can sustain before facing death. Not to be confused with Hewlett-Packard or horsepower.

IAS: short for "increase attack speed," sometimes abbreviated to "AIS" (attack speed increased) or just "AS." It is a stat found on many types of gear and is responsible for contributing to a character's overall damage output. See: 'DPS.'

IGG:vanilla - short for "in-game gold." When players say IGG, they are usually looking for gold that can be used within the game.

IK: short for the "Immortal King" set (example: Immortal King's Triumph), which is a set of items designed specifically for the barbarian class.

ilvl:vanilla - stands for "item level," a property that is associated with all items levels 60 to 63. In Reaper of Souls, there are no longer item levels and each item simply has a base level requirement in order to be used.

Imba: short for "imbalanced." Players tend to refer to something as "imba" when they think something is overpowered or clearly not in proper use. See: 'OP' and 'UP.'

Instabrim: vanilla - portmanteau of "instant" and "Brimstone," referring to legendary and set items that are taken directly to the Blacksmith for salvaging into Fiery Brimstones. This usually occurs when the items hold no additional value (e.g. poorly rolled stats) other than the Brimstone itself, and oftentimes happens before the item in question is even identified due to predetermined undesirable properties. In Reaper of Souls, legendary and set items at levels 61+ grant Forgotten Souls when salvaged, thus rendering the term "instabrim" obsolete in those cases. See: 'Forgotten.'

ISO: short for "in search of." In vanilla, it was often paired with items, such as "ISO ____ with [stats]" or "ISO group for Bounties," with the latter more common nowadays. See: 'LFG,' 'WTB,' 'WTT,' and 'WUG.'

Jade: refers to the "Jade Harvester" set items (example: Jade Harvester's Mercy), a set of witch doctor gear primarily used with the legendary voodoo mask, Quetzacoatl (see: 'Quetz'), in conjunction with damage over time spells (see: 'DOT').

Jbord: short for "Jekangbord," a legendary crusader shield that revolves around the Blessed Shield skill. See: 'Captain America.'

jsp: short for "d2jsp," a popular third-party website that has served as an out-of-game trading hub since the days of Diablo II. Players usually list their offers on the website to gain increased publicity and then sell to interested buyers in-game after contact. Jsp stands for "Java Script Parser," which originated when d2jsp was primarily used as an illegal way to manipulate Diablo II's gameplay and/or files. Today, it's a harmless trading hub for Diablo players.

Junger Rules: refers to a style of Bounty split farming (see: 'Split Farm') first publicly initiated by <Viz>Junger in a thread on the official forum. The "rules" forbid players from clicking on lootable objects, such as treasure chests, corpses, etc. as such objects can trigger global legendary drops (legendary items can drop anywhere in the game world regardless of where players are located on the map). Many concepts within Junger Rules are merely speculative (see: 'Tinfoil Hat'). However, because of the high demand of Rings of Royal Grandeur (see: 'RORG'), which can only drop from Act I Horadric Caches, and because of the highly publicized success rates of participants following the "rules," the number of followers in the Junger Rules community has steadily grown.

JW: short for "Jay Wilson," the original game director of Diablo III (has since stepped down to pursue other endeavors).

KB: short for "knockback," an effect that is triggered through various skills (e.g. Bash) and item properties (e.g. Windforce) that pushes a target back a variable distance.

KD#: or just "K#," which is short for "Keep Depths" followed by level 1, 2 or 3. For example, when players mention KD1, they mean Keep Depths level 1; or K2 as in Keep Depths level 2. These are areas in Diablo III's Act III, which, especially for Keep Depths level 2, are notorious for being packed with a ton of mobs, which directly leads players to take advantage of the extra experience and loot that could be accumulated over a shorter period of time than in lesser-dense areas. As of patch 1.08, other areas besides the Keep Depths have been buffed to balance out mob densities.

Kulle Story, Bro: a reference to the oft-used line, "Cool story, bro." This variation is a tribute to the Diablo character Zoltun Kulle.

KW: short for "Keywarden," mini-bosses that drop the keys necessary for crafting Infernal Machines (see: 'Machine'). There is one Keywarden per Inferno Act. Act I is Odeg, who can drop the Key of Bones. Act II is Sokahr, who can drop the Key of Gluttony. Act III is Xah'Rith, who can drop the Key of War. Act IV is Nekarat, who can drop the Key of Evil.

Lag: a term that is sometimes used to describe a connection problem between a player's network and Diablo III's servers. However the more common use is as an excuse to explain a player's sub-par in-game performances, e.g. dying (and potentially sabotaging the party's farming efforts). Can occasionally be a legitimate reason.

LAK: short for "life after kill," a stat that returns X amount of life to a character per enemy killed. To be more exact, it should be “LAEK” or “life after each kill,” which is how the property is worded on items. Often incorrectly abbreviated as "LOK" (life on kill) or “LPK” (life per kill).

LeapQuake: refers to barbarians who utilize the Might of the Earth gear set, Lut Socks, with the Leap and Earthquake skills. See: 'EQ Set.'

Leg: short for "legendary," a quality of item. Not to be confused with the appendages that enable organisms to walk and/or run.

Legacy: refers to items that existed before an itemization patch (1.04 and 2.01). These items are removed from existing loot tables and are replaced with brand new items. The term “legacy” will encompass all original D3 items upon the launch of the expansion, Reaper of Souls.

Legacy Nat's: namely the Natalya's Wrath set (example: Natalya's Gaze), the original Natalya's set (see: "Nat"). The set is still sees use because of the unique bonus Discipline regeneration (see: 'Disc') that is not found through any other set of items or abilities in the game.

LFG: short for "looking for group," a phrase that represents a player who is in search of a party. See: 'ISO.'

LIF: stands for "Leech it Forward," an act of participating in Rift it Forward (see: 'RIF') games solely for one's own benefit, usually because of bypassing requirements for opening a Nephalem Rift. The bypassing mechanic was removed in Patch 2.1 as all players are required to chip in a Rift Keystone to participate. Leeching is still an appropriate term for players who join in at the last moment, trade in a Keystone, obtain the Blood Shards from the Rift Guardian, and promptly leave for another close-to-ending Nephalem Rift.

LMB: short for "left mouse button."

LOH: short for "life on hit," a stat that returns X amount of life to a character per instance of a hit, depending on a spell's hidden coefficient.

Lollipop: refers to the set wand, "Chantodo's Will," which is shaped very much like a lollipop (see: 'Chant'). Originated from the Chinese-speaking forums for Diablo III, where the phrase "棒棒糖" (bàngbàngtáng, lit. lollipop) was consistently used when discussing the wand.

Look! More Hidden Footprints!: generally used as a snide remark by players whenever they uncover hidden details or mechanics about the game that tend to be in their disfavor or disadvantage. It is a nod to the Enchantress follower's lines in Act II: Shadows in the Desert, when the player seeks out the hidden cultist outposts.

Loot: any item (gear, gold, potions, tomes, gems, etc.) that drops within the game and can be picked up by the player.

LS: short for "loot share" or the act of sharing and trading new item drops within a party. In vanilla, the term was short for "life steal," a stat that returns X% of total damage dealt by a character per instance of damage. The stat completely loses its effects at level 70.

Main: the player's primary character. Most of the hours spent, blood, sweat, tears, and sometimes money will be poured into the main character. See: 'Alt.'

Main Stat: originally called “primary stat’ (see: ‘Primary Stat’), but the definition changed upon the release of Patch 2.0.1. Main stats are dexterity (demon hunters and monks), intelligence (witch doctors and wizards), and strength (barbarians and crusaders).

Mempo: short for "Mempo of Twilight," a high-end helm item that was arguably the best helm for boosting both DPS and EHP for all classes in vanilla Diablo III. It has since lost its popularity in Reaper of Souls.

MF: short for "magic find," a type of stat in the Diablo series that passively improves the chances of a rarer item to drop within the game. In Reaper of Souls, magic find has drastically reduced effects and only 10% of it will affect legendary item drop rates.

MH: stands for "Main hand," or weapons that are placed in the primary weapon slot for dual-wielding characters (see: DW'). Also see: 'OH.'

Mit: short for "mitigation," or more accurately, "total damage reduction," a type of stat that is determined by a player's armor and resistances to elements. It plays heavily in determining a player's defensive prowess. See: 'EHP.'

Mobs: essentially describes the different types of monsters and enemies the player encounters in the world of Diablo III. These can range from standard weak monsters to elite and champion varieties. See: 'e' and 'Trash mobs.'

Monk:a melee dexterity-based class in D3. Sometimes called a "monkey."

MOS: short for "Mantra of Salvation," an ability specific to monks. It replaced Mantra of Evasion in Patch 2.1.

MP:vanilla - short for "monster power," an in-game option that allows players to adjust game difficulty by raising or lowering monster health and damage. Ranges from 0 to 10, with 10 being the most difficult. This feature was removed in Reaper of Souls.

MS: short for "movement speed," a stat that is used by characters to gain faster mobility across the game world. Not to be confused with Microsoft.

MVP: short for "Most Valuable Player." MVPs for Blizzard Entertainment are players chosen by Blizzard to help facilitate quality discussions on the official forum, and also serve as a bridge between Blizzard representatives and the general player base. Blizzard MVPs stretch across all Blizzard titles, including WarCraft, StarCraft and Diablo. MVPs are not Blizzard employees. As such, their posts will be highlighted in green as opposed to the Blizzard employees' blue. As of 5/15/2014, there are a total of 9 Diablo III MVPs representing the U.S. forum, which include: Jaetch (general), Monstrous "MrMonstrosity" (general), Narull (general), AlphaShift14 (monk), Druin (monk), PieHole "PieHole1628" (wizard), Galx (hardcore), MissCheetah (tech) and TheTias (tech). There are also community fan site webmasters/admins/moderators who are tagged as MVPs on the official forum.

Nerf: the act of reducing the effectiveness of a certain spell, stat or mechanic. Usually occurs when the consensus is that one of the aforementioned aspects is far stronger or more effective than intended. See: 'OP.'

Nirvana:vanilla - a specific monk build centered around spirit generation and Wave of Light. The term "nirvana" is used for when the monk reaches nirvana and can spam high damage spells in quick succession.

NS: short for "non-Season" or non-Seasonal characters and games.

OBO: vanilla - short for "or best offer," a term paired with selling items or auctioning items. Usually included by the seller in order to negotiate buyout prices with potential buyers. See: 'BO' and 'C/O.'

OH: short for "Off-hand," or the weapon that is not placed in the primary weapon slot for dual-wielding characters (see: 'DW'). Wizard sources, witch doctor mojos, demon hunter quivers, and shields can also be referred to as off-hands.

OP: short for "overpowered" or "original post/poster." The former refers to anything that players believe are too strong to be fair (see: 'Imba,' 'Nerf' and 'UP'). The latter refers to forums and people who start topics or threads.

OS:stands for "open socket," an item property that can roll on most helms, chest armor, pants, weapons, off-hands, and jewelry.

PA:short for "Prismatic Armor," a rune for the Energy Armor ability specific to wizards. Not to be confused with the Pinpoint Armor rune (see: 'PP'). Also see: 'EA.'

Paragon: or Paragon levels, is a system that extends beyond the level cap of 60 for player characters. In the original Diablo III, a total of 100 paragon levels exist, with each level granting the basic +3 to primary stats (see: 'primary stat'), +2 to vitality, and +1 to each secondary stat, in addition a bonus permanent 3% magic find and 3% gold find (see: 'MF' and 'GF'). In Patch 2.0.1 and Reaper of Souls, Paragon levels are unlimited and there will no longer be any fixed stat bonuses per level. However, one Paragon Point will be awarded per level, which can be assigned to a variety of stats, such as vitality, critical hit chance, life percentage, resource cost reduction, etc. Also, Paragon levels will be account-based and not per character For example, if a player’s account is Paragon 120, all of his or her characters will be Paragon 120.

Patch 2.01: the infamous "Loot 2.0" patch that revamped the game of Diablo III. It was a transitional patch bridging the original D3 with the expansion, Reaper of Souls.

Perma-: a prefix that is attached to various builds that indicate a "permanent" or near permanent effect. Examples include "permafreeze," a common way wizards focusing on various cold spells to continuously lock down enemies, "permastun," which a variety of classes can use, notably monks wielding the Sledge Fist weapon, "perma-Vault," which involves demon hunters running the Danetta's set (see: 'Danetta's') with Hatred regeneration items to use Vault nonstop.

Pets:refers to summonable entities that serve the player's character. Most often affiliated with witch doctors, but can also be found with other classes like demon hunters and wizards.

Pity Timer: refers to a system within Diablo III that virtually guarantees a legendary or set item drop (sometimes called a "pity drop") for a player once he or she plays through an extended phase without seeing a legendary or set item drop in-game. The exact timer is unknown, but has been mentioned by Blizzard officials on several occasions since Reaper of Souls' Beta. Once a legendary or set item does drop, the timer is reset. The timer is not affected by legendary items obtained through the blacksmith, Kadala and Horadric Caches and unique drops like Blacksmith plans do not count toward resetting the timer.

PK: short for "player kill" or "player killer," which refers to the act of a player-controlled character killing or directly causing the death of another player-controlled character. See: 'PVP.'

PM: short for "private message," a messaging system often used within games or in online forums.

Poor Man's Mempo:vanilla - a nickname for the legendary helm "Andariel's Visage" (see: 'Andy's') before Patch 2.01 because of various stats it shared with the legendary helm "Mempo of Twilight" (see: 'Mempo'). Both helms shared high primary stats and attack speed. Andariel's Visage always came with critical hit chance, but Mempo had the chance to roll higher critical hit chance. Mempos always came with a socket, and Andariel's Visage could also roll a socket. However, Mempo also came with high resistance and life bonus, which made it a better all-around helm. This changed in Patch 2.01 when Andariel's became able to roll elemental skill bonus, making it unique from Mempo.

PP: short for "Pinpoint Armor," a rune for the Energy Armor ability specific to wizards. See: 'EA.'

Prep:vanilla - short for "preparing" or "preparation" (not to be confused with the Demon Hunter skill of the same name). Can sometimes be used alongside "prepping," "prime" or "priming." This is the act of going through dungeons or fields and aggroing (see: 'Aggro') enemies in order to trigger bonus effects or to whittle down the health of mobs before engaging in a run (see: 'Run'). Common uses for prepping include multiplayer Crypt Runs (see: 'Crypt Run') and loot runs where players separate beforehand to "prepare" the Decaying Crypt, round up clusters of mobs in the Fields of Misery, the Weeping Hallow, and also weaken elite and champion packs in the Festering Woods.

Primary Stat: In the original Diablo III, this is an umbrella term for dexterity (demon hunters and monks), intelligence (witch doctors and wizards), and strength (barbarians). However, with Patch 2.0.1, primary stats refer to a wide range of stats that include vitality, all resistance, armor, life percentage, sockets, and more. The original “primary stats” definition is gradually better known as “main stats. See: ‘Main Stat.’

Proc: a term meaning the chance for an effect to be "triggered" or take place, and in terms of Diablo III gameplay, this usually refers to the effects of skills and abilities and effects of passive stats like life on hit. For instance, abilities that read "X% chance to do Y effect" is based on a proc. Each ability also has a coefficient (hidden number) that further alters the overall chance of the proc. See: 'Proc Coefficient.'

Proc Coefficient: a term that refers to hidden numbers tied to every spell and ability in Diablo III. The coefficients determine how often a proc will take place in addition to any pre-existing effects of a spell. The lower the proc coefficient, the less likely the bonus effect will take place. See: 'Proc.'

Proxy Bidding:vanilla - a method of bidding for online auctions that is not limited to the Diablo III auction house (that said, considering the AH is shutting down on March 18, 2014, proxy bidding will also no longer be a part of Diablo III). This method of bidding relies on computer-generated bids rather than human bids that must be manually inputted. For proxy bidding, one player simply has to place a bid higher than the current bid and let it sit in the system. Whenever another bidder comes in to make an offer, if the bid is lower than the first player's, the proxy bid will automatically increase the current bid to just higher than the new bid. This will continue until someone comes along and bids higher than the highest existing proxy bid.

For instance, Player A sees a Mempo with a bid of 120 million gold and no buyout price. Little does he know, Player B already placed a bid of 500 million gold on that same Mempo. Player A decides to offer 150 million gold as his price. However, since Player B already has a 500 million stake on the Mempo, Player A will be automatically outbid and the Mempo's "current" bid will be raised to 5% higher than the current bid (in this case, 5% more than 150 million, or 157.5 million). Player A can try again, and this time he places a bid of 300 million gold. But again, the offer will be automatically rejected and pushed to 315 million since Player B's 500 million gold offer still stands. Until Player A overtakes the 500 million gold bid, he will always be outbid instantaneously.

The goal for proxy bidding is to ensure that the bidding player does not pay more than he or she is willing to pay. In the scenario above, let's assume Player B placed the 500 million gold bid because he is only willing to pay a maximum of 500 million gold for the Mempo. If no one can match Player B's proxy bid, then Player B will win at a price that is the next increment over the second-highest bid (5%). If someone overtakes the proxy bid, then Player B does not have to pay, but simply loses out on the auction item and gets the original 500 million gold refund. See: 'Snipe.'

PTR: stands for "public test realm," an isolated game format where players can test new features of an upcoming content patch without interfering with the live state of the game. Nothing from the PTR server will transfer over to the live game. Developers are also free to manipulate the settings as the testing goes on in order to obtain more data.

PTV: short for "Pierce the Veil," a passive ability specific to witch doctors.

Pull Monk: refers to monks that build around the "Cyclone Strike" skill. These monks mainly serve a support role in group play. See: 'Vacuum Cleaner Monk.'

PuY: short for "pickup yards" or in some cases, "pickup radius" (abbreviated "PUR"), an in-game property that can be boosted by items, which increases an invisible active area where players can automatically obtain gold and health globes. Witch doctors in particular benefit from additional pickup yards given many of their abilities reach higher potentials with a higher pickup radius.

PVE: short for "players vs. environment," also commonly abbreviated as PVM or "players vs. monsters," which refers to the player combating articifial intelligence as the primary gameplay. See: 'PVP.'

PVP: short for "players vs. players," which refers to a combat system that revolves around players fighting other players as the primary gameplay. See: 'PK' and 'PVE.' (currently only available in 1v1, 3-way free-for-all and 4-way free-for-all formats)

QQ:originated from the emoticon "Q_Q," which appears much like two eyes with tears streaming down the sides. Represents crying or the act of complaining that seems like crying. Not to be confused with the Chinese instant messaging system.

Quadfecta:a term used to describe items that have main stats, attack speed, critical hit chance, and critical hit damage. See: 'Trifecta' and 'Quintfecta.'

Quetz:short for "Quetzacoatl," a legendary voodoo mask known for effectively doubling the damage output of damage over time spells (see: 'DOT') in combination with the witch doctor passive Creeping Death.

Quintfecta:vanilla - sometimes just "quinfecta," a term used to describe items that have the combination of stats: for jewelry - average damage, main stats, attack speed, critical hit chance, and critical hit damage. For gloves - primary stats, resist or vitality, attack speed, critical hit chance, and critical hit damage. These stat combinations are no longer possible for rare items upon the release of Patch 2.0.1. See: 'Trifecta' and 'Quadfecta.'

Rage: a phenomenon that occurs when a player generates enough anger or sadness to enter a temporary period of severe anxiety, despair and minor to intense insanity. Usually results in deflammatory comments online or, in worst cases, physical violence. See: 'Rage quit.'

Rage quit: an event that generally occurs after a player is overwhelmed with "rage" (see: 'Rage'). This usually involves yanking their phone line out of their wall or computer, or simply hitting the alt+F4 combination to leave a game. Sometimes, but not always, players will then isolate themselves in their real-life surroundings to either mope or, in the most severe cases, inflict mental or physical harm on themselves or others. See: 'QQ.'

Ramalamadingdong: refers to "Ramaladni's Gift," (see: 'Gift') a consumable item that grants a free socket to a socketless weapon. The nickname came from the 1950s doo-wop song "Rama Lama Ding Dong" by The Edsels. The nickname also could have resulted from Blizzard mistakenly calling it "Ramalandi's Gift" in Patch 2.1's early PTR notes, and then changing it back to Ramaladni's, thus confusing the player base. In addition, it could have resulted from players not knowing how to pronounce the item's name.

Raspberry: refers to "Baleful Remnant" due to the end of the flail appearing like the fruit.

RCR: short for "resource cost reduction."

RD: short for "Reflect Damage," an ability that is sometimes assigned to elite and champion mobs that, when attacked, automatically deal damage back to the character. See: 'Affix.'

Reroll: refers to the act of enchanting an item property via the Mystic. Can sometimes be called "reforging," though not nearly as often. Also refers to the act of restarting a character from scratch.

Resource: term for the expendable "energy" required by D3 classes to cast spells or activate abilities. They are: Fury for barbarians, Wrath for crusaders, Hatred and Discipline for demon hunters, Spirit for monks, Mana for witch doctors, and Arcane Power for wizards.

RF: short for "Rapid Fire," a skill specific to the demon hunter class.

RG: short for "Rift Guardian."

RIF: antiquated term (as of Patch 2.1) - stood for "Rift it Forward," an activity that involved a player who acted as a "runner," and 1-3 other players who acted as "leechers." The runner was responsible for clearing a Nephalem Rift and, upon reaching the Rift Guardian, would post in a "Rift it Forward" community notifying other players that he/she has 1-3 spots available in the game. The other players, or "leechers," would request to join the game. One of these players would be assigned to open up the next Rift. The "runner" would usually post who would open the next Rift beforehand. Example postings could be, "T3 RG, last one in opens" meaning a Rift Guardian in Torment III was available for kill and the last person who made it into the game would have to open the next Rift. Or "LF1M T2, you must open" meaning the runner was "looking for one more" person to join the game (see: 'LFG'), but that person must open the next Rift. "Rifting it Forward" provided players who enjoy running through Rifts free Rifts while providing players who just wanted Blood Shards and Forgotten Souls quick games to obtain such materials at the cost of their Rift Key Fragments.

Rifting: refers to the act of running through Nephalem Rifts in Adventure Mode.

RLTW: short for “Run Like the Wind,” a rune for the barbarian’s Sprint ability.

RMAH: vanilla - short for "real money auction house." Serves as a junction where players trade items and commodities (including gold) with real currency as the bartering chip. It was shut down on March 18, 2014.

RMB: short for "right mouse button." Not to be confused with renminbi, the official currency of China.

RNG: short for "Random Number Generator" or generation, a system that many aspects of Diablo III follow, such as item affixes and quality, elite monster affixes, and dungeon map and pathing. See: 'Affix' and 'Roll.'

Roll: describes the process of generating random stats on a particular item. When an item is dropped upon defeating an enemy, the stats on the item are randomly "rolled" in order to determine the number of affixes on the item and the numerical quality of the affixes (i.e. 50 dexterity opposed to 200). See: 'Affix' and 'RNG.'

Rubberbanding: or just "rubberband," a phrase coined to describe the phenomenon when a player's character suddenly "bounces" back to a previous location. This is usually the result of in-game bugs or latency issues.

Run: the representation of a session of killing enemies to obtain rewards, be it items, experience, or just pleasure.

S-T

SA: short for "Storm Armor," an armor ability for the wizard class. Sometimes specifically refers to the "Shocking Aspect" rune for Storm Armor (see: 'SNS').

Sader: short for "crusader," mid-range strength-based class in Diablo III, introduced in its first expansion, Reaper of Souls.

SB: short for "Siegebreaker," a boss enemy in Diablo III. Can also stand for "Spirit Barrage," an ability specific to witch doctors. Can also stand for "Spectral Blade," an ability specific to wizards.

SC: short for "softcore." Characters running in Softcore mode generally play for leisure given that they have no true restrictions to their playstyle. See: 'HC.' Can also refer to the legendary wizard hat, "Storm Crow."

Sentry DH:refers to demon hunter builds that revolve around the Sentry skill, usually in combination with the Marauder set. See: 'M6.'

SF:vanilla - stands for "self-found," or a way of playing Diablo III that limits players to using only items they find themselves via in-game drops. Strictness varies from player to player. Some allow crafts, though materials for crafting must be obtained in-game. Some reject all forms of trading, while others allow trades with players as long as the items were found by the players within that one particular game session. Essentially, no use of the auction house (gold or real money) is allowed. This is now a redundant term in Reaper of Souls considering all players will be playing self-found.

SH: short for "Soul Harvest," an ability specific to the witch doctor class.

Sheablo: a portmanteau of "she" and "Diablo," referring to the possibility of Diablo being a female.

Sheet DPS: refers to the "Damage" section of a character's stat screen, usually just referred to as "DPS." See: 'DPS' and 'EDPS.'

Shotgun: refers to crusader builds utilizing the legendary two-handed flail, Fate of the Fell, and the crusader skill, Heaven's Fury, more specifically the Fires of Heaven rune. With Fires of Heaven and Fate of the Fell, three beams will trigger per cast, making it look like the crusader is firing a shotgun. Sometimes called the "holy shotgun build" because of Fires of Heaven's holy element.

Shrine Gloves: refers to "Gloves of Worship," which extend the duration of shrine effects on the wearer. See: 'GOW.'

Snapshot: or "snapshotting," which refers to actively buff your character and then use a spell that lasts over a period of time (either a duration spell such as the monk's Sweeping Wind, or a channeled spell such as a demon hunter's Rapid Fire or wizard's Disintegrate). When a spell gets "snapshot" it benefits from the existing buff as long as the spell is active, even if the buff wears off or gear pieces are changed.

Snipe: vanilla - or "sniping," a term that refers to bidding on an online auction item (not limited to those of the Diablo III auction house) seconds or milliseconds before the auction expires. This is a strategy that many players use to beat out competitors, if his or her bid is high enough, of course. Usually this is done in order to try and win an auction item at a bargain price, or to win a highly desirable item by placing in a last moment "proxy bid" (see: 'Proxy Bidding') to overtake other last moment bids. This usually applies for auctions with no buyouts, but can also apply for auctions with buyouts that are significantly higher than what most players are willing to pay. On the other side of the spectrum, sniping also applies for buying out an item that has just been listed in the auction house, and the practice is often referred to as "BIN sniping" (see: 'BIN'). Usually this occurs when an item is priced significantly lower than the market value, thus players attempt to buy it before competitors see the opportunity. Considering the auction house in Diablo III is to be shut down on March 18, 2014, sniping will no longer be a feature.

SOE: short for "String of Ears," a legendary belt known for its high melee damage reduction.

SOH:short for "Shard of Hate," a legendary sword based on Mephisto, the Lord of Hatred. It is an item that was featured prominently in Blizzard's "Design a Legendary" community project prior to the release of Reaper of Souls.

SOJ:short for Stone of Jordan, a legendary ring renowned for its massive bonus damage against elites.

Soon™:a poke of good fun directed at Blizzard's policy of only releasing games, products, patches, features, etc. when "it's ready." The estimated date or time when something is ever ready, however, is often unknown, and the term "Soon™" is often used to determine the ETA.

SoV: short for "Zei's Stone of Vengeance," a legendary gem. Sometimes referred to simply as "Zei's" (pronounced as Zai's, rhymes with eyes). Bonus info: Zei is a trickster god in Xiansai mythology.

Split Farm: refers to the act of party members splitting up in one game, usually for Bounties in Adventure Mode, in order to clear content faster to obtain rewards, such as Horadric Caches.

SS: depending on context, it can mean many terms. SS could be short for "Smoke Screen" or "Sharpshooter," both abilities that are specific to the demon hunter class. Also stands for "Seismic Slam," an ability for barbarians, and "Sleet Storm," a rune for the Ray of Frost ability for wizards. Also short for "Stormshield," a legendary shield. Also short for "Serpent's Sparker," a legendary wand. Also sometimes refers to "Simplicity's Strength," a legendary gem. Can also mean "screenshot," a built-in mechanic for Diablo III that involves hitting the PRT SCR button to capture the in-game screen, saving it to your Diablo III folder in your Documents.

SWK: refers to the "Monkey King's Garb" set of items (example: Sunwuko's Crown). The set is based on the character Sun Wukong (also known as the Monkey King), the protagonist in the Chinese classic novel, Journey to the West.

Sword & Board:refers to a player's choice of wielding a sword as a main-hand weapon (sword) and a shield as the off-hand (board). Originally supposed to consist of a sword and shield, but now can refer to any one-handed weapon in combination with a shield.

T4T: vanilla - stands for "thanks for trade," a courtesy statement delivered after two players complete an in-game trade.

Tal: short for the "Tal Rasha" set items (example: Tal Rasha's Brace), a set of wizard-oriented gear that is known for unleashing Meteors based on elemental skills cast. See: 'TR.'

Tank: a term used to describe characters that focus mainly on survivability and often choose to skip on offensive prowess (see: 'Glass Cannon').

Throw Barb: refers to barbarians that build around the "Weapon Throw" and "Ancient Spear" abilities, essentially transforming the standard melee class into a ranged one. More often than not, they will also equip the legendary spear "The Three-Hundredth Spear" to further enhance the skill. In Reaper of Souls, this term is more often referred to as "Boulder Toss Barb" because of the Boulder Toss rune for Ancient Spear.

Tinfoil Hat: a phrase that originated from the science fiction story, "The Tissue-Culture King," which has then been tied to extreme symptoms of paranoia as well as belief of conspiracy theories. In essence, it is claimed that a tinfoil hat can prevent radio frequency waves or telepathic signals from invading a person's brain, thereby preventing higher powers from taking control over their minds or having their brains explode into hazardous waste products. In Diablo III, tinfoil hats are usually placed on those who believe various mechanics of the game are all the results of an elaborate conspiracy put in place by the game's developers (predominantly loot drop rates and quality). Most people laugh at those who don tinfoil hats.

TnT: short for "Tasker and Theo," a pair of legendary gloves that increases the attack speed of pets. It is a tribute to British Lance Corporal Liam Tasker and his bomb-detecting dog Theo. LCpl Tasker was killed by a sniper during a tour in Afghanistan in 2010. Theo was rescued by fellow soldiers, but suffered a seizure upon arriving at the army base. Theo died shortly afterward, with a consensus that the dog was under too much stress from witnessing his handler's death. Tasker and Theo, as a team, discovered and dismantled more bombs than any other human-dog team during the five months they were on tour. They were buried together and repatriated in the United Kingdom after their deaths. R.I.P.

TOC: short for "Trail of Cinders," a rune found on the demon hunter's Vault ability; and also "Thrive on Chaos," a rune for the Wrath of the Berserker ability (see: 'WOTB'), which is specific to the barbarian.

Toon:another term for player characters. Originally a term that refers to player characters from MMORPGs, but has since been applied to a variety of RPG-style games, including Diablo III.

TP: short for "town portal," an ability all classes can use to warp back to the safety of their town. Sometimes incorrectly used to refer to general teleport-based abilities. Not to be confused with toilet paper.

TR: short for "Tempest Rush," an ability specific to the monk class. It's often a skill that is paired with the Tailwind rune in order to provide temporary bursts of high movement speed. Can also refer to "Tribal Rites," a passive skill specific to witch doctors. Lastly, sometimes also used as an abbreviation for the Tal Rasha set items (see: 'Tal').

Transmog: short for "Transmogrification," which is the act of changing the appearance of one item into another. Legendary transmog options are permanently unlocked when the player identifies an item. The player can then pay a small fee at the Mystic to transform the appearances of his or her items. This applies only for the following slots: head, shoulder, chest, hands, legs, feet, weapon, off-hand. Sometimes further shortened to "Xmog."

Trash Mobs: refers to regular monsters that continuously appear throughout the overworld and dungeons of Diablo III. These monsters are the common enemies that a player's character will have to fight in the game. Their stronger counterparts are the elite and champion packs (See: 'e' and 'Mobs').

Tri-Cross: stands for "Trifecta Blackthorne's Duncraig Cross." Blackthorne's Duncraig Cross is a set amulet from the Blackthorne set (see: 'BT'), and these in particular have attack speed, critical hit damage and critical hit chance as properties. See: 'Trifecta.'

Trifecta:a term used to describe items that have attack speed, critical hit chance, and critical hit damage. See: 'Quadfecta' and 'Quintfecta.'

Tri-Flection: stands for "Trifecta Natalya's Reflection." Natalya's Reflection is a set ring from the Natalya set (see: 'Nat'), and these have attack speed, critical hit damage and critical hit chance as properties. See: 'Trifecta.'

Tri-Pox: stands for "Trifecta Zunimassa's Pox." Zunimassa's Pox is a set ring from the Zunimassa set (see: 'Zuni'), and these have attack speed, critical hit damage and critical hit chance as properties. See: 'Trifecta.'

Tri-Tal: stands for "Trifecta Tal Rasha's Allegiance." Tal Rasha's Allegiance is a set amulet from the Tal Rasha set (see: 'Tal'), and these have attack speed, critical hit damage and critical hit chance as properties. See: 'Trifecta.'

Twink: the act of equipping a lower level character with items that it will not normally be able to find until in higher difficulties with the intent of making the character perform at a higher level than intended. Rewards for "twinking" include faster clear time for quests, faster net experience gains, and faster rate of defeating monsters. See: 'Alt.'

U-Z

Uber: an optional boss that can be challenged using the Infernal Machines in Act I: Return to New Tristram (Campaign Mode) or in New Tristram in Adventure Mode. Ubers come in pairs as Leoric & Maghda, Ghom & Rakanoth, Zoltun Kulle & Siegebreaker, with the exception of Diablo, who can summon any of the other Ubers while in combat. See: 'Machine.'

UFO Beam: a nickname for the crusader’s “Heaven’s Fury” skill, which resembles a giant beam fired down from the sky. The term was initially coined during Reaper of Souls' beta phase. Sometimes called "God Beam."

Unbuffed: stands for a character's base statistics without relying on any effects from auras or self-cast abiltiies or passive abilities. See: 'Buffed.'

UNID: short for "unidentified," referring to unique items that have yet to be identified.

UP: short for "underpowered." This refers to anything players believe are underused or too weak by standards. See: 'Imba' and 'OP.'

refers to monks that focus on the spell "Cyclone Strike," which pulls enemies toward the monk, much like a vacuum. See: 'Pull Monk.'

Vanilla: refers to the original state of the game or an aspect of the game. For example, "Vanilla Inferno" refers to the original Inferno mode for Diablo III, before any patch changes. This term refers to the original ice cream flavor, which is vanilla.

Vanilla D3:refers to the original Diablo III, prior to the release of its first expansion, Reaper of Souls (see: ‘ROS’).

VOTA: or "VoA," short for "Vault of the Assassin," a dungeon in Act II that was notorious for having a numerous elites in a relatively small space in the original Diablo III. It has since changed in Reaper of Souls and has a more variable monster density within its confines.

VQ: short for "Vision Quest," a passive ability belonging to witch doctors.

VSORCS:vanilla - stands for Vault of the Assassin + Desolate Sands + Dahlgur Oasis + Forgotten Ruins + Eastern & Western Channels + Storm Halls. Sometimes abbreviated as VORCS without the first S (Desolate Sands), or SORCS without the V (Vault of the Assassin). It's a farming run centered around those areas of Act II. See: 'FWF' and 'Run.'

VW: short for "Vile Ward," a pair of legendary shoulders considered an unofficial set piece of the Legacy of Raekor set because of its synergy with Furious Charge.

WD:short for "Witch Doctor," a ranged intelligence-based class in D3 that specializes in summoning spells.

WF:short for "Windforce," a legendary bow that is best known for its high chance of knocking back enemies.

WH: short for "The Witching Hour," a legendary belt that is notorious for dramatically boosting a character's damage potential because of attack speed and critical hit damage bonuses.

Wiz: short for "Wizard," a ranged intelligence-based class in D3 that specializes in elemental spells.

WKL: short for "Won Khim Lau," a legendary fist weapon (specific to monks) that specializes in bonus lightning effects.

WM: short for "Weapons Master," a passive ability specific to barbarians.

WOL: short for "Wave of Light," a skill specific to the monk class. See: 'Bells.'

WOTB: short for "Wrath of the Berserker," a skill specific to the barbarian that transforms the character into a virtually unstoppable killing machine for a short period of time. Usually only held back by walls or iron doors.

WoW: short for "Wand of Woh," an elusive legendary wand. See: 'Chainpocalypse.' Not to be confused with "World of WarCraft," another Blizzard Entertainment game.

WP: short for "waypoint," a device that allows players to instantly be transferred to another location. Not to be confused with the phrase "well-played."

WTB: vanilla - short for "willing to buy," a phrase used by players when they publicly declare that they are searching for a particular item and will pay X amount of gold or real currency to obtain it. Now sometimes used in jest for items players cannot find on their own. See: 'FT,' 'ISO,' 'WTS,' 'WTT' and 'WUG.'

WTS: vanilla - short for "willing to sell," a phrase used by players when they publicly declare that they are selling a particular item for X amount of gold or real currency. See: 'FT,' 'WTB,' 'WTT' and 'WUG'

WTT: vanilla - short for "willing to trade," a phrase used by players when they publicly declare that they are trading a particular item for another item or group of items. See: 'FT,' 'ISO,' 'WTB,' 'WTS' and 'WUG.'

WUG: vanilla - short for "what you got?" a phrase used by players when seeking specific varieties of an item they are searching for. See: 'FT,' 'ISO,' 'WTB,' 'WTS' and 'WTT.'

WW: short for "Whirlwind" or "Wicked Wind," the former a barbarian ability and the latter a rune for the wizard's Energy Twister spell.

WW Barb: short for "Whirlwind barbarian," a type of build that features the Whirlwind ability.

Xbow: short for two-handed crossbow weapons.

XP: short for "experience," sometimes abbreviated as "EXP." Player characters gain experience as they defeat monsters or complete quests. Experience is required to advance characters to higher levels, and only cease to apply after a character reaches maximum level (60) and paragon level (100). See: 'Paragon.'

ZB: short for "Zombie Bears" or just "Bears," a rune that is under the "Zombie Charger" ability for witch doctors.

ZD:short for "Zombie Dogs," summonable creatures that come from "Summon Zombie Dogs," an ability specific to the witch doctor class. Sometimes just referred to as "Dogs." See: 'Pet.'

ZDPS: stands for "Zero Damage Per Second" or just "Zero DPS," referring to character builds that focus on support and defense, rather than offense. These builds are almost exclusively used in group play.

ZK:short for "Zoltun Kulle," a character in the Diablo franchise and a boss character in Diablo III.

Zookeeper: refers to builds that are centered around pets. See: 'Pets.'

Zuni: short for the "Zunimassa" set (example: Zunimassa's Trail), a set of gear that mainly benefits intelligence-based classes.

1) Introduction
I wanted to write this guide in quite a while. Inspiration for this guide (or is it rather a list?) was actually the gear list in the barbarian guide – it was quite useful when I geared my barbarian up. When I switched to my wizard, there were similar lists, but nothing really tailored to what I was looking for. Now, a couple of months later, I thought it might be useful to create what I would have deemed to be helpful when I switched to my wizard as main. So, for who is this guide useful? If you’re gearing up your wizard and you’re interested in learning for which items to look out for, which stats are important, then take a look. Also, if you are any other class and you want to learn what items we wizards are interested in, section 5 might be interesting for you. Basically, I tried to cover all the answers given in many threads in one guide. There are many low budget guides, and many build guides, but none of the existing guides really helped to answer the general questions like “which slot should I update next”, “which helm should I buy”, and so on. At this point, I need to mention that there is one outstanding guide about gearing already – Jaetch’s Massive Guide to Upgrading Wizard Gear. However, it’s not up to date anymore and I think that this guide will turn out to be slightly different in terms of target audience and the way it reads; furthermore, Jaetch told me that he put his project on hold for the time being.

In this guide, I will first explain some of the basic terms and abbreviations that will be used later, introduce some of the main builds that are being played right now (because it makes a big difference for gearing up) and summarize some of the main points to consider when gearing up by categorizing stats into different types. The main part consists of a list of all useful items (which will of course be growing as it’s difficult to make such a list ever “complete“) and explains for each item why and in which situations it will be helpful for your wizard. For those who prefer TL;DR version I’ll also have a list of items in the subsequent section without explanation. Obviously, there have been other people pursuing similar efforts and I would be a fool to not acknowledge them – I’ll link to them in the last section, and also try to cover questions that have been asked (and answered) previously on these forums or elsewhere.

2) Terminology and builds
There are many terms and abbreviations that have developed in the past. For a full list please check Jaetch’s D3 Urban Dictionary. I’ll just try to cover most of the terms that will be used in this guide.

Builds
There are two main builds being used by the majority of wizards. However, despite many people saying there are “only two viable builds” available, these builds can vary in which specific spells/runes are being used, and there are other builds which might not be as efficient, but equally fun. The two main builds are CMWW and Archon:

CMWW is very efficient for high MP levels and/or in groups as a support spec. There is an excellent CMWW guide written by Loroese.

Archon is the opposite of CMWW – it works best on low MP levels and for solo farming. TheDemokin wrote an Archon guide, check it out.

There are also interesting hybrid builds, one that works well for many people is Jaetch’s MP10 stunlock build that combines Archon and CMWW – have a look at his original thread and an updated version. Keep in mind, however, that this requires quite decent gear; if you’re low on budget it’s probably best to focus on one strategy and not head for MP10 straight away.

Blizzard builds might become more interesting soon - there isn't a definite build yet that seems to stand out particularly. Due to the buff 1.07 (nearly tripled the damage) it's a very strong spell now, but needs to be accompanied with another spell that can is being used while Blizzard rains on your enemies; it makes sense to use Ray of Frost since Cold Blooded is a passive that almost every Blizzard build will use. Some first specs that were proposed are the Sleet Storm build or the Black Ice Wizard (and they even work on mid-high MP levels for extremely low budgets, as has been shown here!).

Kiting builds are one alternative. In early days, they were often mentioned as the cheap alternative to the rather expensive CMWW and Archon builds. However, as there are recent guide for 1 million budget CMWW and 1 million budget Archon gear, kiting builds are only used by very few players. Many wizard damage spells lent itself to kiting (Blizzard, Hydra, Meteor) and some blue posts hint that these might see further buffs; therefore these "outdated" kiting builds might become popular again in the foreseeable future.

Keep in mind: there are 1,259,070,313,000 possible build variations in Diablo 3 only for the wizard class (see the math). Each build works best with specific gear optimized towards it, and it takes a while to figure out in which situations and how exactly it works best. This guide looks at gear tied towards the existing common builds, but this is just to clarify that no “build overview” or “gear list” will ever be “complete”. See the Inferno guide in these forums or the wizard compendium on the official forums which has a lot of thought-provoking build ideas - if you're stuck or don't enjoy any of the existing builds, why not come up with a new one?

3) Categories of stats
Diablo 3 has many different affixes on items. I’ll loosely categorize them into four different categories: offensive, defensive, life recovery, and others. These should be self-explanatory: offensive stats help to increase your pew-pew, defensive stats protect yourself against pew-pew, and others might contribute to one or the other but are optional and you can even have zero of one of these and still be a top-class wizard.

OffensiveIntelligence (int) is your main stat. For every wizard build it is very important and you want to get as much as possible. Even as CMWW wizard, when other stats are more important, you will have a lot of int. Keep in mind that int is a defensive stat as well: 10 int provide you with 1 AR; in the endgame wizards usually have about 2500 int, which translates to 250 AR!

Improved attack speed (IAS) is the most important stat for CMWW wizards. Most other builds benefit from IAS as well since it increases your DPS. If you at some point plan on creating a hybrid build or you want to switch between CMWW and a different build without maintaining two sets of gear, it’s not a bad idea to get a decent amount of IAS. However, if you are a pure Archon or kiting wizard you can save a lot of money here as people pay a lot of extra money for IAS. Note that many BiS legendaries have IAS as one fixed stat, therefore you’ll get some of it eventually anyways. In general, IAS is an important stat for many builds and if you have CM as a passive or LoH for life recovery you want lots of IAS; otherwise you might consider saving money here by shifting attention to other stats.

Critical hit chance (CC) is again very important for almost all builds, but for different reasons. CMWW wizards want as much CC as possible in order to proc CM as often as possible. 35% is a minimum, the more the better; your goal should be 50%. All other builds want CC because it gives you a huge increase in DPS. However, other builds should not just stack “as much CC as possible” but try to maintain a good ratio of CC and CD. While CMWW wizards can completely neglect CD in the early stages, wizards playing other builds should aim for a ratio of 10 CD per 1 CC. For example, if you have a crit chance of 30%, it’s most efficient if you have about 300% critical hit damage.

Critical hit damage (CD), as mentioned before, is not very important if you’re playing CMWW (unless your stunlock works well, your EHP is fine and you’re just looking for DPS increase). All other builds should try to get about as ten times much CD as their CC (e.g., if you have 30% CC try to get 300% CD). If your crits do 1000% of normal damage but your crit chance is 5%, it’s a waste; similarly, if you have 60% crit chance but you’re at 50% crit hit damage, you’re wasting potential.

Average damage comes in different affix shapes: either as “+x min damage”, “+y max damage”, or “x-y damage”. It’s a base stat of all weapons, but it can also roll on jewelry (amulets, rings) and offhands (sources). It’s one of the most underrated stats; maxing the average damage on your offhand can be key in raising your DPS. Similarly, many people treat the three aforementioned attributes as “trifecta” (IAS, CC, CD), but slowly the term “quadfecta” is becoming more and more popular, which essentially means trifecta plus average damage. And because no item should come without int, “quinfecta” is the term for an ultimate item of awesomeness (int, average damage, IAS, CC, CD).

“Adds +x% to elemental damage” – this affix caused a lot of confusion. It essential means it will give an x% bonus damage to all your physical damage, and the damage will be dealt as elemental damage of the specific given type. It does not matter what spell you’re using, but it does matter what weapon you’re using. Your weapon must be a “black weapon” – see the FAQ part for a detailed explanation – otherwise this affix will lose about 60% of its usefulness. There is a blue post about this, and there were manythreads where all the details have been explained thoroughly. This affix only appears on legendary ones, but it’s an essential part of high-end DPS, in particular for Archon wizards. For CMWW wizards this affix is not as useful because one of the most useful weapons for CMWW is not a “black weapon” (more about this in the respective section).
There are some other stats that somehow affect your damage, but I’ll get to them in the last section, because they’re not as important and commonly used as the others.

DefensiveResistance to all elements (AR) is one of the most important stats. You need at least 300-400 AR buffed (Archon MP0), but some people like to have as much as 1000 AR buffed (CMWW on MP10). Keep in mind that a huge chunk of your AR comes from int; however, you need at least some pieces of gear with all resist on them.

Armor is a stat that is heavily underrated by many wizards, but also other classes and therefore quite cheap. There is no minimum amount of armor that is absolutely necessary to hit, but getting a few pieces with this stat can significantly increase you EHP. CMWW wizards try to get about 3500-4000 armor (though some people like to have about 5000 buffed).

A common topic is the “armor-AR 10-1 ratio”. What does this mean? Essentially, this rule of thumb says that 1 AR is worth about 10 armor. However, this is only true if you are already at a 10:1 ratio, e.g., if your wizard has 4000 armor and 400 AR. This is usually not the case, because we get AR through int and AR comes in as much as 80 on a single slot, while we try to avoid strength (which gives 1 armor per 1 strength) and armor can’t roll higher than 397 (chest, pants, helm, amulet) or 265 (other slots). Therefore, many people rather have something like 2500 armor and 600 AR. In this case, armor is much better for your mitigation (the ratio would then be about 6:1). Therefore, try to get some armor and not go AR only – both ways of damage reduction work multiplicatively and it’s inefficient to boost one to infinity while neglecting the other stat.

Vitality is obviously another important stat. Each point in vitality awards you 35 HP, and your goal should be about 30-35k HP. This is very subjective – some people prefer to have much more (I’ve played with 90k for uber fights just for fun, and I know that this much HP is usual if you play hardcore), while some people manage to get along with much less (e.g., 20k HP glass canons). See what works for you, but aiming at 30-35k is not a bad idea for most people.

Life % is another way of raising your HP, however, it’s only useful if you have already a considerably amount of HP. Keep in mind, 100 vitality grant you 3500 HP; if you have 35k HP, you 10% to life will be as good as 100 vitality. If you’re at 22k HP, the maximum amount of life bonus (12%) will give you 2640 HP, which is only 75 vit, a stat that often comes for free. Therefore, unless you’re stacking high amount of health, stay away from life % and choose one of the other stats (AR, armor, vit) to boost your EHP. Wait, EHP?

These three stats (armor, AR, HP) combined can be used to calculate your effective health pool, EHP. You can find a more elaborate explanation of EHP in a thread on the official forums. It essentially shows how much damage you can really take before you die, and when you calculate this stat it helps to value if an item will be really beneficial for your survival. These three main survival stats should always be balanced.

Physical resistance is the one additional resistance that you want to go for, if it comes for free. Why? Because many mobs deal physical damage and it’s a pain, especially in melee, and whether you’re an Archon wizard with Scramble rune or a CMWW wizard, you will eventually get hit in melee from time to time. Furthermore, reflected damage is always physical (regardless of what type your damage is, it’s always reflected as physical and 10% of the amount of damage you dealt), so this is your way to make this mob affix less painful. Other resistances that might be worthwhile are fire or lightning – don’t bother with poison or cold resistance, the damage dealt is a joke and if you’re having troubles with these kind of elements, you should bump up your EHP in general.

Life recovery
I thought about putting these in the defensive stats category; however, these are optional and there are wizards who have none of these stats on their gear and are totally fine (there’s always the Blood Magic rune to cope with loss of HP).

Life regeneration is the cheapest stat to recover your HP. However, it’s also the one that is the weakest in terms of efficiency. You need to stack a lot of life regeneration in order to notice it and survive some of the nasty attacks. Some situations will be difficult to survive with life regeneration only, even if you have close to the maximum (about 5000). It’s probably most useful if you have low DPS and you are interesting in a kiting build. For higher DPS and MP I would not recommend it, at least not as single life recovery resource (combine it with one of the other ways of getting life back). There's an interesting discussion going on about the life regeneration affix and how it needs to be fixed to be viable for endgame again - look at Lezard_Valeth's thread over here.

Life on hit (LoH) is the best way to go if you have low DPS, and regardless of your DPS it’s the best way if you run CMWW. CMWW causes not only CM but also LoH to proc very often; therefore you get a lot of life back. 400-500 LoH can be enough for any endgame build if the other stats are sufficiently high. If you are a high DPS Archon wizard, LoH becomes less efficient and you should switch to life steal.

Life steal (LS) – for Archon wizards, at around 100k DPS LS trumps LoH. It can only roll on a weapon and therefore occupies an affix slot and makes the weapon ridiculously expensive; you can also get LS via rune (Blood Magic), but only 1.5%. Note that life steal gets a 80% reduction in Inferno, so Blood Magic will only recover 0.3% of your damage dealt as life – however, it’s still a lot better than LoH once you get past a certain DPS threshold. Note that LS makes any weapon really expensive; if you play on lower MP levels and have a decent kill speed, consider LaK (see below).

Life after kill (LaK) is one of these stats that is completely neglected by many players and often seen as almost useless, but it can be very strong indeed, especially for Archon wizards. Archon wizards want to kill quick and as many enemies as possible, therefore you tend to play on MP levels where monsters are basically a one hit. You can get as much as 9000 LaK, and if you see your life drop a few kills can completely refill your health globe in no time. Due to the damage reflect changes in 1.07, LS is not an absolute must anymore and LaK became a perfectly viable alternative to LS. Give it a try!

Extra health from health globes – for the sake of completeness, this stat is mentioned here. It’s not a bad idea to get this affix on one or two items, like +20k HP for each health globe. Health globes drop more often as you think, and combined with increased pickup radius this can be very strong and reduce your downtimes a lot. It’s probably a good combination if you decide to go with Blood Magic only and ditch all the LoH/LS stats which are so expensive.

Other statsPickup radius, is, as mentioned before, almost mandatory if you rely on extra health from health globes. How much pickup radius you get is totally up to you though; some people like to have as much as possible (20+) which causes you to pick up almost everything instantly. Other people like to keep this stat small (5-7, only one item) such that you can control what you pick up. In any case, I would urge everyone to at least try out once to play a while with a pickup radius of 20+, because it’s just amazing to run around and feel like a big badass vacuum cleaner. If you’re OCD and want to pick up every gold pile, this stat is a must because otherwise you spend too much time walking around.

Increased damage against elites can be useful if you’re skipping lots of trash mobs and go for elite packs or boss fights. In most cases items that have this affix are worse than other items in these slots, and therefore you have to consider your playing style (how much time of my play time will I encounter elite enemies and how much time will I be fighting normal mobs) and the DPS you lose by equipping these items. For example, if you lose 10% DPS by equipping an item that improves your damage versus elite by 30%, but you will only fight against elite in about 30% of your play time, it will slow you down (your 70% time of trash mob fights will be 10% slower, while the 30% of your play time fighting elite will be 20% faster). For uber bosses or key runs this stat might be useful – however, many people use CMWW in that case and then damage is not always your first priority.

Arcane power on crit (APoC) is needed when you intend to create a build with a main spell that uses arcane power and you don’t back it up with a signature spell and a passive to get arcane power back. Archon wizards usually don’t need this, while CMWW wizards need a lot of APoC (aim for about 16-20). For kiting builds it depends on the support spells you use in your kiting build and your play style, but it’s not a bad idea to get some APoC. Similarly, if you’re using Arcane Orb or Disintegrate, you probably want this as well; the latter can be sustained with the 4 piece set bonus of the wizard set (Tal Rasha), more on that later. It very much depends on your build, play style, and other gear (e.g., IAS). APoC only comes on the three wizard-specific items: wizard hats, wands, and sources.

Sockets – on all slots where you can get sockets, you want them, and you want as many as possible. At the same time, sockets can be damn expensive and if you’re on low budget it takes some time which combination is the best “bang for a buck” for you – should I take this 3 socket pants with low vitality or the one socket pants with decent stats? What gems can I buy from the budget I have left? I’ll try to cover sockets in the respective sections for each slot.

Movement speed (MS) – this is absolutely mandatory for Archon and kiting builds. However, it’s capped at 25%, so we want to get two items with 12% (the maximum per slot). For CMWW, MS is not that important – you can use Teleport to compensate for that.

Bonus experience can only be gained from four different sources: Hellfire Ring (35%), Leoric’s Signet (up to 30%), a ruby gem in your helmet (up to 33%), and Cain’s set (3 piece bonus 30%). The maximum amount of bonus XP on gear is therefore 124%. However, you lose a lot of stats if you decide to go with all these items. I will cover the rings and ruby in the respective sections, but I will not talk about the Cain’s set, for a reason: If you’re at NV5 on MP1 with Hellfire Ring, max ruby and Leoric’s on yourself and follower (counts as 20%), your bonus XP is 207%. If a mob yields 5000 XP it would now give you 15350 XP. By adding Cain’s set, you would get 232% bonus XP or 16850 XP; an increase of 9.8% XP due to the 30% of the Cain’s set bonus. This is because all bonuses are calculated multiplicatively. However, Cain’s set is very low level and has virtually no useful stats, therefore you will definitely lose about 20% of your DPS – and thus it’s not worth it in most cases. As of 1.07, it might even be the case that you don't want any XP gear if you're playing on high MP (see here for some examples and here for a complete chart (NV5) or one for NV0).

Magic find (MF)/gold find (GF) is a stat that can become very expensive and it never comes for free, i.e., you have to keep in mind that every time you get an item with this stat you’re giving up on another useful defensive or offensive stat. Yes, you can stack magic find and feel a difference in drops when farming – however, by having 150 MF on your gear you have up on a huge amount of DPS, which in turn would have resulted in increased farming speed and also increased amount of drops. At the same time, faster farming does not only give you more loot, but also more XP, and XP lead to paragon levels. Paragon levels give you permanent magic find and gold find. Therefore my personal advice: skip MF/GF on gear and max DPS, gain paragon levels and enjoy the lasting effect of free MF/GF that does not occupy any affix slots on your gear.

4) List by slot
For each slot, I’ll list the items to consider, why they’re good and in which situations it might be good to aim for them. I’m adding one thing that I’m missing in many other guides – caveats on some legendaries/sets which are often overlooked and lead people to invest in expensive items even though there are cheaper, better choices available and they just go straight for the “BiS” item without knowing why.

Helm
For most people, a socket in your helmet is probably a must-have. If you’re leveling paragon on low MP, you want to put a ruby in there (up to 33% bonus XP); if you're playing high MP, it's not that important anymore (see bonus XP section above). For those who are paragon 100 or mostly fighting ubers, the other gem of your choice is an amethyst (up to 19% life bonus). Keep in mind, 19% life is more than the maximum for this affix on every slot (12%) and a huge bonus. However, the socket makes a helm expensive, and a helm without socket is a hard sell sometimes even if it has godly stats. There are three legendary helms and one set helm worth considering, and “bad rolls” of these helms are really cheap so there is no point in going for a rare item on this slot.

Comes with great DPS (int+IAS) and great EHP (AR + life%). The one random property should be CC if you want to go for max DPS, otherwise get one with vitality for the extra EHP (also much cheaper). Great for all builds and absolute BiS with int+CC roll.

A Mempo with CC is insanely expensive (usually starting at 100 million for 3% CC and other stats quite low as well). However, Mempo with vitality as random stat instead of CC is still great and quite cheap.

Perfect rolls would be vitality and AR, but armor is a good roll too. If you don’t need IAS on your head slot this is a great boost (especially in EHP) for CMWW.

If your health is too low, the life% bonus is useless. Unless you get a really good roll for this helm, other (cheaper) helms will most likely be better. Also, the set bonus for 2 and 3 pieces are quite disappointing.

Only helm with IAS and CC by default. Unlike Mempo or Tal Rasha’s, comes without a socket – so this is the random roll you most likely want; with 1.07 and if you're playing high MPs, you might prefer some EHP stat here.

If you want one of these, make sure that the “fire bonus taken” affix is as low as possible, don’t take anything with more than 10, or you will be constantly dead on many elite packs. Also keep in mind that it will never reach the EHP of a Mempo.

Great starter helm for CMWW builds due to APoC and LoH. Has no CC, so you probably have to give up the extra XP from a socket here to get CC as random roll.

Lacks high int, CC, AR, vitality, armor, life%, socket… therefore you should aim to get LoH and APoC on other slots and go for one of the other helms – even mediocre rolls will be better than a good Storm Crow, DPS- and EHP-wise. Also, you need a black weapon.

These crafted shoulders can potentially be better than perfect Vile Ward, (330 vs. 300 intelligence max). However, it's extremely rare to get a good roll, considering that Vile Ward always come with huge EHP.

You need to invest quite a lot in order to trump your Vile Ward, and you can't trade them.

Absolute BiS item. There’s no DPS affix that can roll on shoulders except for int, and Vile Ward have the second-highest roll after the crafted shoulders (up to 300). The other random stat of your choice would be life%, though some like to get pickup radius here. Always comes with a lot o EHP.

The drawbacks might vanish soon: they're not absolute BiS anymore thanks to the new crafting recipe, so not everyone is wearing them anymore, and you can finally use Vanishing Dye to hide their ugly looks (yeah I know, it's subjective).

Of the wizard’s set’s items, this is the one everyone wants. It’s the only chest with IAS and therefore a must-have for many CMWW wizards. As for the random rolls, keep in mind that chest can roll up to 300 vitality which is huge. AR is the most wanted stat on TR chest, along with vit, armor, and life%.

Since every wizard wants one, it’s still not quite cheap, and it’s almost impossible to get your hands on one with high AR and still have reasonably high other stats (unless you plan on selling your mother).

The witch doctor’s set has nice bonuses (130 int and 55 AR), which makes it an interesting target for us as well. Their chest has the same stats but AR instead of IAS. Not a bad choice if you’re not craving for IAS and own one or two pieces of the set already.

Since IAS is quite important for almost all wizard builds, and EHP is easier to obtain than DPS at some point, consider Tal Rasha’s first.

If you’re a pure CMWW support wizard, your APS is fine and you just want to stack more EHP, this is great, especially since the pants and amulet are also nice items for CMWW and the set bonus isn’t bad either. Get a mix of int, vit, armor, or life% as random stats.

In most cases, you would prefer the IAS from Tal Rasha chest over the slight EHP bonus this chest offers. It’s rather for gearing up if you’re on low budget.

Needs a lot of money and patience to get a lucky roll that has good other stats (high EHP, preferably).

Rare chest

Despite the great choice of set and legendary chests, a rare chest might be worth a look, too. If you don’t need the IAS from Tal Rasha’s or the MS from Tyrael’s, you can get all other important stats from any rare as well – int, vit, AR, armor, sockets.

Yes, believe it or not, a godly rolled rare amulet will be BiS, even though almost every high-end wizard is wearing Tal Rasha’s. A godly rare amulet has basically quinfecta (high int, average damage, CC, CD, IAS) and some vit. Anyways – even some of these stats are fine for starters! If you’re CMWW, get LoH here (up to 959).

Such an item has not been created by the Diablo loot machine yet – all DPS item score lists are topped by the Tal Rasha’s amulet. However, with the new crafting recipe we might seen more of them showing up; but then, crafting the int amulets is quite expensive and a gambling.

Great amulet even with “bad rolls”, however, we really want IAS and CC here, and lots of them, because this slot and gloves are the only ones where we can get +10 CC. As a CMWW wizard, you absolutely need high CC and some IAS here, and for many other builds it’s the same.

Since you want CC and IAS, and it already has int and CD, it means that every “decent Tal Rasha” automatically is a quadfecta item and thus insanely expensive. Also, you need a black weapon again for the elemental bonus damage to work.

High int and trifecta. If you’re CMWW, you may skip CD here, if you’re Archon or kiting, you may skip IAS – and save a lot of money. Crafted gloves always come with high int, so consider crafting as an option.

Since you can only have 6 affixes and four of them should be high quadfecta stats, you’ll lose EHP on this slot. Good trifecta gloves are expensive on the AH, so if you like "gambling" you can try to craft some and hope to get a good roll.

A low-budget solution for some Blizzard builds. Make sure you have max cold skill damage (close to 30%) and a black weapon!

You lose up to 10% CC, 50% CD, and a lot of int compared to rare gloves – especially the crit hit synergy effects that you lose make Frostburn’s a bad choice once your gear has reached a certain level.

Even a badly rolled WH will give more DPS than a perfect rare. Go for 1-2 useful rolls for the random affix rolls; a perfect WH with int/vit, AR, and armor is what you want if you just won the lottery. Only IAS item on this slot (CMWW).

Even a badly rolled WH might still be beyond your budget, and even a perfect roll will have less EHP than a rare belt.

Since the set bonuses are useless, this belt only makes sense if you plan on going for a build that demands high Arcane Power without APoC backup (e.g., Disintegrate). But then, the 4 piece set bonus is better than one might think, especially if paired with Astral Presence.

Won’t even come close to Witching Hour (DPS) or rare belt (EHP, in terms of price).

Rare belt

If you can’t afford a Witching Hour and/or you badly need some EHP, this is the slot to get some! High int, vit, maybe even strength; high AR and armor, if you have a lot of HP life%, and you still can fit a nice bonus affix like pickup radius or health globe bonus in.

Except for up to 200 int, a rare belt will lack lots of DPS compared to any Witching Hour. This is what makes rare belts so cheap and Witching Hours so expensive.

These pants are quite cheap and offer the badly needed LoH for CMWW. Get some more EHP (depending on your budget and what stat you need; vit, AR, armor, sockets, …). Also, the set bonus makes these nice, though a nice amulet or chest of Blackthorne’s set is more expensive.

If you don’t need the LoH, these pants don’t offer anything that you won’t get on cheap rare pants – make sure you don’t get caught just by its color.

Rare pants

High int is mandatory as on all items, but pants (other than Inna’s) are a slot for great EHP because they can roll up to 300 vitality (plus two sockets if you’re really craving for HP). Int, vit, AR, armor, life%, maybe even strength (for armor) make some perfect pants for a huge EHP boost.

Godly rolled rare pants can get really expensive and will never get at the DPS of Inna’s.

Craving for EHP? Consider these and go for the first set bonus! (Gloves being the other item)

Of course, these items won’t get you anywhere in terms of DPS.

Rare boots

Even though there are lots of legendaries and sets, rare boots can often be a match. If you are Archon or kiting wizard, 12% MS are absolutely mandatory; other than that, go for the usual (int, vit, AR, armor, …)

There is no real drawback here, and if you’re short on money, rare boots are fine.

Rings
There are so many different rings, it all comes down to “what you need” on your gear (EHP? DPS?) and if you want experience bonus. Note: rings can have as much IAS as amulets and gloves (9%), but less CC (6% vs 10%) and much less CD (50% vs 100% on amulets).

If you’re not yet paragon 100 and you play on low MP levels, you definitely want this one for the bonus XP. However, it takes some time to get a reasonable one – don’t give up; even a non-perfect roll will still be good, don’t underestimate the 170+ int.

You’ll definitely lose some DPS compared to a rare ring – it might be a good idea to get other rings for non-farming occasions (uber boss gear). And for high MP levels it's not that useful, see bonus experience for an explanation why.

Rare ring

A “quinfecta” (int, average damage, CC, CD, IAS) with some vit will be BiS. However, to save some money you can also get some other stats instead (like AR or vit for EHP or LoH if you need some for your CMWW setup).

It’s often difficult to find the right ring – unless you’re super rich, there isn’t “the one ring to rule them all”. Therefore: keep sub-par rings to have options for your gear, in particular when aiming for a CMWW APS breakpoint.

This one is really great for CMWW – because of the set bonus (the boots are the cheaper part of the deal). High int and CC is desired – but the latter extremely expensive. However, even if you can’t afford CC on this ring, it’s still more than on any rare ring, considering the 7% set bonus.

If you aim for high CC you’re competing with all other classes and it’s going to be really expensive – and at some point you’re better off buying an expensive near-perfect rare ring and Zuni boots. Therefore it’s only useful for CMWW, where CC is crucial.

It might not be BiS in terms of DPS, it’s not really cheap, but this is a really good choice for CMWW – all stats already there, plus bonus IAS. You want APoC as random roll then.

Not really a cheap choice, and a Triumvirate with APoC gives more DPS for probably less money. It’s most useful if you have the main hand as well (and this means, getting rid of all elemental damage bonus stats on your gear).

Overall great orb and a nice alternative to the others – often a bit cheaper. If you don’t care about IAS and you don’t have a black weapon, this might be the orb of your choice.

It’s no real match DPS-wise to a good Triumvirate (given that you have a black weapon).

Rare orb

All aforementioned orbs are quite expensive, so a rare orb with high average damage (absolute first priority) int, vit and crit will do.

It’s only a good choice for starters, this is a slot where the legendaries/sets are pricey but really much better without any drawbacks.

Weapon
The main question you have to answer yourself before you start looking for a weapon is “how much life steal, if any, do I need”? You can get up to 6% if you go for a two-handed weapon, but you give up on a lot of stats on the off hand – not recommended. Furthermore, you can save a lot of money by not getting any life steal on your weapon; compensate for it by raising your EHP, choosing the Blood Magic rune and getting more life regeneration. Most importantly, try using LoH (for CMWW this is absolutely sufficient and LS not necessary at all) or LaK (especially useful for Archon where killing fast is your business anyways).

Another important thing is the socket; you definitely want one if you go for DPS, almost no exception here. For most people an emerald will be the gem of choice. The weapon gem is most important and thus should always be the highest gem on your gear (i.e., if you only have money for maxing out one gem, let this be your weapon gem). Get a Radiant Star Emerald or, if you want to squeeze out every single bit of DPS and have the money, a Marquise Emerald. The pure crafting cost (considered you have all materials) are about 16 million gold (radiant star) and 120 million gold (marquise), keep that in mind. Plus, the marquise gem is bind on account and expensive to remove from a slot (5 million gold). But: the emerald is not the only option, you might also consider a ruby. It really depends on gear, spec, budget, and availability of gems.

Item

Why is it great and for which build?

Drawbacks

Rare weapon

If you’re CMWW, you want a wand (because of APoC) or a Dagger (because it’s fast), with IAS. If you’re just looking for highest DPS, take a sword with IAS, CD, and socket (and LS/LaK depending on what you feel comfortable with). Make sure this is a “black weapon”, i.e., it has no elemental damage!

Swords, daggers and wands are really expensive if they have good stats and high DPS. Your way out is to take a mace or axe – works fine if you don’t need IAS (Archon).

Was once advertised as the low budget solution – frankly, it’s not that cheap. However, if you really feel like you want up to 6% LS and you’re willing to sacrifice DPS and in particular CC (no orb), try it out! It might be especially useful for the new Blizzard builds.

Even though this weapon can be really really great, your DPS will definitely take a hit and you lose a lot of stats because you give up on an orb.

5) TL;DR BiS list
It’s difficult to make a BiS list because different items have different priorities for different builds and existing gear setups – therefore the order within these lists might be “random” for some of the slots/builds.

6) Follower’s gear
Before gearing up your follower, you need to decide which one you want to take with you, and what his function will be. All followers share 20% of the magic find, gold find, and experience bonus on their items with you; therefore, followers in D3 are mainly considered to be “MF/GF/XP bitches”. However, besides this they can have other functions, as follows:

The Templar can be a decent tank, and add some life and Arcane Power regeneration; however, to be fair, it is almost unnoticeably little.

The Scoundrel gives you a 3% CC buff, but besides this it can also be equipped with a specific weapon to freeze all enemies.

The Enchantress offers a 3% IAS buff, along with a 6% ranged damage reduction from enemies. Furthermore, she can offer you a tank by giving her a specific weapon.

Choose buffs/functionality that you deem to be most helpful for you. If you want MF plus tank, take the Templar; if you want MF plus buffs, take Enchantress. Don’t even think about turning them into damage toons – their damage is a joke and it’s much more useful to give them helpful bonus stats or functionality rather than trying to gear them up to 10-20k DPS (difficult and expensive enough). But in order for them to provide you with buffs or tanking/freezing functionality, they need to be alive; therefore their EHP should be your number one concern. Followers receive 250% of the bonus from all basic affixes (vit, int, str, dex), which means that 100 vit, 100 int, and 100 str will provide your follower with 8750 life, 25 AR, and 250 armor. Therefore, vit, str, and int (in this order) are highest priority, followed by life%, AR, and armor. These are basic stats you should try to get for all followers to make them last long enough even in tough battles.

For bonus XP, equip your followers with a Hellfire Ring and – if you have the money – a Leoric’s Signet; it will give you up to 13% bonus XP. The perfect Hellfire Ring is crafted using the vitality recipe and has MF, GF, AR, and life% as random rolls.

For magic find, you want to give your Templar a Sun Keeper or your Enchantress a Grand Vizier. Jewelry and shield (for Templar) should have all the other necessary EHP stats plus max MF, obviously. Even though the Templar can wear 20% more MF, it’s only 4% more for you and not worth sacrificing the way more useful buffs that the Enchantress has to offer – but the choice is yours.
The freezing Scoundrel is a nice option in particular if you’re running a Blizzard kiting build – her freeze works nicely together with your Cold Blooded passive. What you need is a Buriza-Do Kyanon with high “chance to freeze” (at least 12%, but the more the better) and high piercing value (at least 65%, but again the more the better). Combine this with The Star of Azkaranth to maximize the effect; again, the amulet should have high chance of freeze on hit (> 4%). Besides the usual EHP stats, you should aim for IAS. Obviously, this entire setup will not allow you to maximize bonus XP and MF, but it’s a lot of fun and works really nice when combined with a Blizzard build.

Last but not least, the Enchantress can offer you a nice tanking option if you give her a Maximus. The summoned demon actually tanks almost better than the Templar and is around almost all the time – so if you want to get the Enchantress’s buffs, try it out, Maximus is really cheap.

7) Wizard FAQ
I thought about having a list of links here, or some general comments, but instead I’m just gonna do this “FAQ style” – basically trying to answer some of the questions that have been asked many times or providing links to threads or websites I’ve come across in the past and I’ve found to be helpful.

The first gear guide I want to mention again is Jaetch’s guide here on these forums. I would not have written all this stuff if he wouldn’t have told me to do so in a discussion a while ago – and I sincerely hope he updates his thread at some point. His thread is actually much more tied to different levels of prices, whereas I try to stay away from numbers as the economy seems to be pretty much unpredictable. Morphos’ Inferno wizard guide (which is still pinned) also offers great info and some tips on gearing up. The guides for the specific builds, namely the Archon guide by TheDemokin and the CMWW guide by Loroese, also have a lot of helpful food for thought about gear. Without all these threads and their input, I wouldn’t even have been able to compile all this.

Another great guide is the huge wizard thread on IncGamers, offering lots of advices beyond gear.
Last but not least, there’s a great thread called the wizard build compendium. While it does not talk about items itself, it has a lot of links to interesting wizard builds and if you follow some of these links, you will find specific advices pertaining to the respective build.

Loroese’s DPS and EHP spreadsheet is probably one of the most accurate, most elaborate, and most versatile tools for all-around character planning.

Kieble has written a nice website that automatically imports your character and offers similar options like Loroese’s spreadsheet.

Jesta is the author of D3up.com, a website that also offers character import and overview of stats. The real beauty of this tool is that you can combine this with D3bit.com, a tool that automatically scans an item’s tooltip and offers a quick comparison of stats, showing you the benefit in terms of EHP and DPS.

On d3cmww.com you can find a CMWW damage calculator similar to Loroese's Matlab tool (does not run in IE).

SaikoDrakie created an EHP calculator and posted it in the theorycrafting corner on these forums.

What the hell is a “black weapon”? Why is this important?
A black weapon is a weapon that has only physical damage and no elemental damage. Here are examples of an elemental weapon and a black weapon. More popular examples are Chantodo’s Force (elemental, because it always has fire damage) and Echoing Fury (black, because it always has min/max damage). The term “black” actually comes from the color of the tooltip’s background. (Yeah, if you’re reading this and you think it’s ridiculous you’re not the only one).

It’s desirable to get a black weapon because many items have an “adds +x% to elemental damage” affix, like Zuni boots, the BiS boots. The description is flawed and Blizzard is aware of this – what this affix means is that 7% (or 8%) of poison damage are added to your overall damage. However, this bonus is only applied to non-elemental damage. For example, for this weapon only 25% of its damage are physical but 75% are elemental (arcane in this case). The poison damage bonus of the Zuni boots would only apply to 25% of the weapon’s damage, and because all your DPS is based on the weapon DPS, this scales up to your character sheet DPS – 75% of the Zuni boots bonus damage affix will be lost!

If you want to read more about this (or don’t understand my explanation), look at the blue post about this affix or these twothreads where this has been asked and answered before.

What is the maximum stat for item X on slot Y?
If you want to know what affixes can roll on which slot and how the different values are, there are two websites. The older of the two which lets you sort by level is D3own.com – even though it says 1.05 PTR, the values seem to be up to date. A more recent site that doesn’t just throw a table at you but combines a nice visualization with nice extras (like which legendary item provides unique stats on a slot) is D3MaxStats.com.

What is the maximum possible DPS with all these BiS items?
Thankfully, people took the time to do the math. TheDemokin did not just create one BiS character, but compared several options (different weapons, boots, offhands) with some interesting and surprising results (go to the thread or check the #1 profile on D3up.com with a stunning 781k DPS unbuffed). On the official forums, Shelendil calculated the maximum buffed DPS a few weeks earlier; look at the post to see how you could theoretically reach 1.3 million DPS buffed.

As players we need more options and fewer "this is the best place to play bar none."

If it weren't for fragments and cache rewards, all we'd be doing is sitting in rifts the whole damned time because Josh decided that rifts > everything else. The more they migrate away from that - to the point that just doing bounties is a viable way to get random gear, to the point that campaign mode could be a nice change-of-pace without sacrificing massive amounts of loot - the better we are as players.

One of the best ways to create longevity is to utilize the amazing amount of possible places we have to farm instead of shoehorning everyone into a singular activity. It would be a step backwards for the game if Greater Rifts were the absolute best place for everything you need because (as we've seen with RiF) it creates this "how can I spend as little time as possible NOT doing this other stuff?" meta game which is just silliness.

The game becomes robust and interesting if, much like loot, everything has a purpose. Loot kinda still needs work because not everything has a purpose. Take that principle and apply it to the whole game.

This is the DPS and EHPspreadsheet I've been working on. It was made with a wizard in mind but so far should work for any class that is not dual wielding, though it currently does not support any class specific buffs or passives besides some of the wizard ones. If you're having any issues with the spreadsheet please read the "Notes" tab to make sure you're entering the correct information. WEAPON +DAMAGE% now has a box in the spreadsheet, so dps values should be accurate.
In case there's any confusion, your Int, Vit, Str,DPS, HP, CC, CD, APS should exactly match the in game value (APS rounds to 2 decimals though). Your armor and lowest resist should match the in game values exactly, though they might differ by 1 due to rounding on the char sheet.

Features:
The spreadsheet features the ability to input your total stats and weapon stats to compute your dps and EHP. There's also a separate tab where you can compare different gear sets. The DPS value should match your in game Damage Number, provided all applicable stats are entered correctly. Additionally the spreadsheet computes relative dps gains for a range of dps stats and also reports those values in terms of comperable values of your primary stat, i.e., how many Intellect is 1%IAS worth, etc.

Here are some more specific features:

1) Calculates unbuffed dps, char sheet buffed dps, and effective char sheet dps. Char sheet buffed dps is what you will see in game based on all your skills. The effective char sheet dps is what your buffed char sheet dps would be if it included all the bonuses for the skill you use (such as +disintegrate%) and elemental damage type (like +arcane damage%).

2) Paragon point table where you can input how many points you spent on each stat. The table also shows you the relative gain of a paragon point for each stat to your effective char sheet dps and your EHP.

3) A second sheet allows you to compare two gear sets and displays the difference in EHP and DPS.

5) A comparison of Marquise Ruby vs Emerald is shown for easy reference, or the gear comparison can be used to compare the different gems at higher levels. For most people Emerald will be much better now that weapon damage% has been drastically cut on new drops (used to go up to 50%, now it's like 10%, if that).

Limitations and Workarounds
Does not compute toughness stat, and toughness is not the same as EHP. I have no plans to implement functionality to compute toughness.

The spreadsheet does not work well with weapons that have a base attack speed of 1.15 APS, or any other base APS not divisible by 0.1. The workaround currently is to set the 1.15 APS weapon to 1.15 APS in the spreadsheet, and put 15% IAS on the weapon IAS cell in column C. That tricks the spreadsheet into computing the correct IAS. If your weapon does have IAS, I'm still working on a solution.

If you have any issues downloading or using the spreadsheet, feel free to post here or send me a PM after you've read the Help tab.

Currently planned additions: update to include other buffs like cold blooded and audacity/
EDIT:
3-15-14 Updated based on 2.0 changes
3-21-14 Updated formulas to account for AR from sockets
3-25-14 Updated Crit Damage to display the amount including paragon levels.
3-28-14

Updated Mob level to 73 for Armor and resist mitigation and EHP calcs

Updated Str, vit, and Int for a lvl 70 character

Added Unwavering Will to buffs list

Updated Enchantress EHP calculation to include armor from paragon points

Updated HP calculation based on lvl 70 character

3-29-14 Corrected EHP calculation with Unwavering Will
3-30-14 Corrected Paragon armor contribution on Full Gear Comparison tab
Added percent differences for DPS and EHP values between Equipped Items tab and Full Gear Comparison tab
3-31-14 Updated Life per Second from paragon levels to the correct amount for level 70 (165.1)
4-13-14 Updated Elite damage bonus calculation to be consistent with changes in game. It now is just an additve modifier.
Changed fill for cells C12 and C13 since they should remain blank
5-9-14 Corrected the Life% display on Equipped Items and Full Gear Comparison tabs to correctly include the amount from paragon points
5-22-14 Updated APS calculation to account for change in Enchantress contribution. Recent patch changed it from +0.03 APS to +3% IAS.
5-30-14 Fix a bug with Primary relative dps gain calculation on 'Equipped Items' tab that would give incorrect values when the enchantress was indicated as being used
5-31-14 fixed weapon damage% affix on weapons to work correctly with elemental damage, per patch 2.0.5 changes

This is the video for you! I've seen alot of posts from people on small budgets that have tried to build a set and...well...didn't do well. This video shows you how to do it right....and quick...and cheap.

Now, I bet you can do better spending more time on each item...and waiting for some bids (instead of all buyouts like I did), but I wanted to challenge myself! Did pretty well with an MP5 wizard doing SNS for only 15M.

*GIVEAWAY!*
The set is also a giveaway to the first forum lurker who get the inside joke in the video! (and, someone who actually need it!). Check out my profile for the set! Leave your guess on the official forums.

As always, check out my other guides, below, for more in-depth information. See you out there!

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DISCLAIMER:
Names, items, places, etc. featured in the video belong to Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All music used belong to their respective recording artists. All included footage credited to their original recorders. No copyright infringements are intended. This video is not to be used for personal profits.

Interested in leveling a wizard? Want to do the highest MP's with a freeze wizard? Want to make Ubers a breeze? Look no further!! I have several guides to make your journey easier. This is a tough build to master, since getting the right balance between CC & IAS and AR and armor is very critical. Save yourself some time frustration and check out my guides below. There is a text one, as well as a video l which I just put together last week. The text guide has over 25,000 hits (its on version three now!) and has been a great source f information for the CM build since I launched it last November.

A heads up on this - we will be updating Dfans at some point in the somewhat near futuer to the system curse uses on other sites. With this update will come our self made spam detection sytem - should help big time then